imacy with any country. I take it you
killed a British citizen.'

'Why, no. Our syndicate confined its operations to aliens--dam-fool
aliens.... 'J'ever know an English lord called Lundie[5]? Looks like a
frame-food and soap advertisement. I imagine he was in your Supreme
Court before he came into his lordship.'

[Footnote 5: 'The Puzzler': _Actions and Reactions_.]

'He is a lawyer--what we call a Law Lord--a Judge of Appeal--not a real
hereditary lord.'

'That's as much beyond me as _this_!' Zigler slapped a fat Debrett on
the table. 'But I presoom this unreal Law Lord Lundie is kind o' real in
his decisions? I judged so. And--one more question. 'Ever meet a man
called Walen?'

'D'you mean Burton-Walen, the editor of--?' I mentioned the journal.

'That's him. 'Looks like a tough, talks like a Maxim, and trains with
kings.'

'He does,' I said. 'Burton-Walen knows all the crowned heads of Europe
intimately. It's his hobby.'

'Well, there's the whole outfit for you--exceptin' my Lord Marshalton,
_ne_ Mankeltow, an' me. All active murderers--specially the Law Lord--or
accessories after the fact. And what do they hand you out for _that_, in
this country?'

'Twenty years, I believe,' was my reply.

He reflected a moment.

'No-o-o,' he said, and followed it with a smoke-ring. 'Twenty months at
the Cape is my limit. Say, murder ain't the soul-shatterin' event those
nature-fakers in the magazines make out. It develops naturally like any
other proposition.... Say, 'j'ever play this golf game? It's come up in
the States from Maine to California, an' we're prodoocin' all the
champions in sight. Not a business man's play, but interestin'. I've got
a golf-links in the park here that they tell me is the finest inland
course ever. I had to pay extra for that when I hired the ranche--last
year. It was just before I signed the papers that our murder
eventuated. My Lord Marshalton he asked me down for the week-end to fix
up something or other--about Peters and the linen, I think 'twas. Mrs.
Zigler took a holt of the proposition. She understood Peters from the
word "go." There wasn't any house-party; only fifteen or twenty folk. A
full house is thirty-two, Tommy tells me. 'Guess we must be near on that
to-night. In the smoking-room here, my Lord Marshalton--Mankeltow that
was--introduces me to this Walen man with the nose. He'd been in the War
too, from start to finish. He knew all the columns and generals that I'd
battled