up a four at Bridge. He went off to see an
aunt or some one at Grantchester!"

"Perhaps," said Bobby Galleon gravely, "he had an exeat and has gone up
to town."

"But he'd have said something--sure. And the porter hasn't seen him. He
would have been certain to know."

Olva was never expected to talk much. His reserve was indeed rather
popular. The entirely normal and ordinary men around him appreciated
this mystery. "Rum fellow, Dune . . . nobody knows him." His high dark
colour, his dignity, his courtesy had about it something distinguished
and romantic. "He'll do something wonderful one day, _you_ bet. Why, if
he only chose to play up at footer there's nothing he couldn't do."

Even the brilliant Cardillac, thin, dark, handsome leader of fashion and
society, admitted the charm.

Now, however, Olva, looking up, quietly said--

"I expect his aunt's kept him to dinner. _He'll_ turn up."

But of course he wouldn't turn up. He was lying in the heart of that
crushed, dripping fern with his leg doubled under him. It wasn't often
that one killed a man with one blow; the signet ring that he wore on the
little finger of his right hand--a Dune ring of great antiquity--must
have had something to do with it.

He turned it round thoughtfully on his finger. Robert, an old, old
trembling waiter, said in a shaking voice--

"There's salmi of wild game, sir--roast beef."

"Beef, please," Olva said quietly.

He was considering now that all these men would to-morrow night have
only one thought, one idea. They would remember everything, the very
slightest thing that he had done. They would discuss it all from every
possible point of view.

"I always knew he'd do something. . . ." He suddenly knew quite sharply,
as though a voice had spoken to him, that he could not endure this
any longer. There was gathering upon him the conviction that in a few
minutes, rising from his place, he would cry out to the hall--"I,
Olva Dune, this afternoon, killed Carfax. You will find his body in the
wood." He repeated the words to himself under his breath. "You will find
his body in the wood. . . ." "You will find . . ."

He finished his beef very quietly and then got up.

Craven appealed to him. "I say, Dune, do come and make a four--my rooms,
half-past eight--Lawrence and Galleon are the other two."

Olva looked down at him with his grave, rather melancholy smile.

"Afraid I can't to-night, Craven; must work."

"Don't overdo it," Cardi