next station to Waldheim. The Red
House is about a mile from here--Mr. Ablett's."

Antony took a letter from his pocket. It was addressed from "The Red
House, Stanton," and signed "Bill."

"Good old Bill," he murmured to himself. "He's getting on."

Antony had met Bill Beverley two years before in a tobacconist's shop.
Gillingham was on one side of the counter and Mr. Beverley on the
other. Something about Bill, his youth and freshness, perhaps, attracted
Antony; and when cigarettes had been ordered, and an address given to
which they were to be sent, he remembered that he had come across an
aunt of Beverley's once at a country-house. Beverley and he met again
a little later at a restaurant. Both of them were in evening-dress, but
they did different things with their napkins, and Antony was the more
polite of the two. However, he still liked Bill. So on one of his
holidays, when he was unemployed, he arranged an introduction through a
mutual friend. Beverley was a little inclined to be shocked when he was
reminded of their previous meetings, but his uncomfortable feeling soon
wore off, and he and Antony quickly became intimate. But Bill generally
addressed him as "Dear Madman" when he happened to write.

Antony decided to stroll over to the Red House after lunch and call
upon his friend. Having inspected his bedroom which was not quite the
lavender-smelling country-inn bedroom of fiction, but sufficiently clean
and comfortable, he set out over the fields.

As he came down the drive and approached the old red-brick front of the
house, there was a lazy murmur of bees in the flower-borders, a gentle
cooing of pigeons in the tops of the elms, and from distant lawns the
whir of a mowing-machine, that most restful of all country sounds....

And in the hall a man was banging at a locked door, and shouting, "Open
the door, I say; open the door!"

"Hallo!" said Antony in amazement.

CHAPTER III. Two Men and a Body

Cayley looked round suddenly at the voice.

"Can I help?" said Antony politely.

"Something's happened," said Cayley. He was breathing quickly. "I heard
a shot--it sounded like a shot--I was in the library. A loud bang--I
didn't know what it was. And the door's locked." He rattled the handle
again, and shook it. "Open the door!" he cried. "I say, Mark, what is
it? Open the door!"

"But he must have locked the door on purpose," said Antony. "So why
should he open it just because you ask him to?"