it.     

       “An hour or more, has he? Have you heard anything?”     

       “He was making a speech a little while back, that’s all.”     

       “No more complaints and palpitations, or anything of that sort?”     

       “Not as I’ve heard. But he never says much to me. Mrs. Wiles gets the benefit of his symptoms mostly.”     

       “You’re not sympathetic, perhaps.”     

       During the talk Hooper had been to a cupboard and mixed a glass of whisky and soda. He brought it to Beaumaroy and put it on a small table by him. Beaumaroy regarded his squat paunchy figure, red face, small eyes (a squint in one of them), and bulbous nose with a patient and benign toleration.     

       “Since you can’t expect, Sergeant, to prepossess the judge and jury in your favor, the instant you make your appearance in the box—”     

       “Here, what are you on to, sir?”     

       “It’s the more important for you to have it clearly in your mind that we are laboring in the cause of humanity, freedom, and justice. Exactly like the Allies in the late war, you know, Sergeant. Keep that in your mind, clinch it! He hasn’t wanted you to do anything particular to-night, or asked for me?”     

       “No, sir. He’s happy with—with what you call his playthings.”     

       “What are they but playthings?” asked Beaumaroy, tilting his glass to his lips with a smile perhaps a little wry.     

       “Only I wish as you wouldn’t talk about judges and juries,”       the Sergeant complained.     

       “I really don’t know whether it’s a civil or a criminal matter, or both, or neither,” Beaumaroy admitted candidly. “But what we do know, Sergeant, is that it provides us with excellent billets and rations. Moreover, a thing that you certainly will not appreciate, it gratifies my taste for the mysterious.”     

       “I hope there’s a bit more coming from it than that,”       said the Sergeant. “That 

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