the tennis-lawn. Gracefully as a bird it settled on the smooth turf, not twenty yards from where he was seated.
Roland Bleke stepped stiffly out onto the tennis-lawn. His progress rather resembled that of a landsman getting out of an open boat in which he has spent a long and perilous night at sea. He was feeling more wretched than he had ever felt in his life. He had a severe cold. He had a splitting headache. His hands and feet were frozen. His eyes smarted. He was hungry. He was thirsty. He hated cheerful M. Feriaud, who had hopped out and was now busy tinkering the engine, a gay Provencal air upon his lips, as he had rarely hated any one, even Muriel Coppin's brother Frank.
So absorbed was he in his troubles that he was not aware of Mr. Windlebird's approach until that pleasant, portly man's shadow fell on the turf before him.
“Not had an accident, I hope, Mr. Bleke?”
Roland was too far gone in misery to speculate as to how this genial stranger came to know his name. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Windlebird, keen student of the illustrated press, had recognized Roland by his photograph in the Daily Mirror. In the course of the twenty yards' walk from house to tennis-lawn she had put her husband into possession of the more salient points in Roland's history. It was when Mr. Windlebird heard that Roland had forty thousand pounds in the bank that he sat up and took notice.
“Lead me to him,” he said simply.
Roland sneezed.
“Doe accident, thag you,” he replied miserably. “Somethig's gone wrong with the worgs, but it's nothing serious, worse luck.”
M. Feriaud, having by this time adjusted the defect in his engine, rose to his feet, and bowed.
“Excuse if we come down on your lawn. But not long do we trespass. See, mon ami,” he said radiantly to Roland, “all now O. K. We go on.”
“No,” said Roland decidedly.
“No? What you mean—no?”
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