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has a house overlooking Suffby Cove. Fairview, it’s called.”
    â€œAs much bathing, fishing, boating as you like,” said Mitchell enthusiastically. “Jobs like that never came my way when I was a youngster.”
    â€œNo, sir,” said Bobby, waiting patiently to know where the snag was.
    â€œMr. Winterton’s a bachelor,” the Major went on. “There’s a butler and housekeeper – man and wife they are – and there’s a gardener whose wife helps in the house. A girl comes in every day from the village, and there’s a secretary, a Miss Raby, who lives in the house and helps with the book. There are three nephews – Colin Ross, Miles Winterton, and James Matthews. Miles Winterton is an engineer, a P.W. man, but out of a job at present. He is staying with his uncle till something turns up, I suppose. Colin Ross is a racing man, and seems to use his uncle’s house as headquarters, staying there when he’s not attending race-meetings. I gather he pays for his keep by putting his uncle on a good thing occasionally. James Matthews seems the black sheep of the family, as he’s an artist and lives in Paris.”
    Major Markham evidently felt that, having said this, he had said all. But Bobby felt there must be more to come, for so far there seemed no reason why the assistance of Scotland Yard should have been invoked.
    â€œYes, sir,” he said.
    â€œWell, you see,” continued the Major, “it sounds rather absurd, but he’s applied for police protection...”
    â€œAnd as he has a pal who’s an M.P., sits for a London constituency,” observed Mitchell darkly – for, though he was a kindly man, and could run in a burglar or a pickpocket as though he loved him, yet he did draw the line at M.P.s, concerning whom his cherished theory was that as soon as elected they should be sent to serve their term, not at Westminster, but at Dartmoor. “Then they couldn’t do any harm or ask any questions either,” he used to say. He added now, still more darkly: “You know what M.P.s are, getting up in the House and wanting to know, and then there’s an urgent memo from the Home Office.”
    â€œI don’t think,” observed Major Markham, a little coldly – for he had visions of being an M.P. himself some day – “that that affects the case. Every citizen has a right to ask for protection. As it happened, however, there wasn’t one of my own men I could send very well. There would have been a risk of his being recognised; and then there is another reason as well. So I asked Mr. Mitchell to arrange to lend me one of his best men–”
    â€œI had to explain,” interposed Mitchell quickly, “I hadn’t one available; so he said, well, practically anyone would do, and so then I thought of you, Owen.”
    â€œThank you, sir,” said Bobby meekly.
    â€œYou’re to be,” explained Major Markham, “the son of an old business friend of Mr. Winterton’s. He hasn’t met you before, but for your father’s sake he is anxious to make your acquaintance.”
    â€œI see, sir,” said Owen, “but I don’t quite understand what he wants protection against.”
    â€œAgainst murder,” Major Markham answered; and the word had a strange, grim sound in the peace of that quiet garden, where the roses and the honeysuckle grew in such profusion, where it seemed the still and scented air should be troubled by nothing worse than the buzz of a passing wasp or the hum of a hungry gnat. “Against murder,” Major Markham repeated; “it seems he thinks that last month, when he lost his brother, that was murder.”

CHAPTER TWO
Bobby Receives His Instructions
    Even Mitchell, a man not easily reduced to silence, whose career had made him familiar with many tragedies, seemed to feel the chill that word imposed upon the warm summer afternoon. He made