sir. I have an idea, sir, that we may find Miss Sipperley disposed to look leniently upon Mr. Sipperley’s misdemeanour.”
“What makes you think that?”
“It is just a feeling that I have, sir.”
“Well, if you think it would be worth trying—How do we get there?”
“The distance is about a hundred and fifty miles, sir. Our best plan would be to hire a car.”
“Get it at once,” I said.
The idea of being a hundred and fifty miles away from Heloise Pringle, not to mention Aunt Jane and Sir Roderick Glossop, sounded about as good to me as anything I had ever heard.
The Paddock, Beckley-on-the-Moor, was about a couple of parasangs from the village, and I set out for it next morning, after partaking of a hearty breakfast at the local inn, practically without a tremor.
I suppose when a fellow has been through it as I had in the last two weeks, his system becomes hardened.
After all, I felt, whatever this aunt of Sippy’s might be like, she wasn’t Sir Roderick Glossop, so I was that much on velvet from the start.
The Paddock was one of those medium-sized houses with a goodish bit of very tidy garden and a carefully-rolled gravel drive curving past a shrubbery that looked as if it had just come back from the dry-cleaner—the sort of a house you take one look at and say to