“I suppose so,” I said. There didn’t seem anything else to suppose. “Well, the only thing to do is to whizz around and try to heal the wound, what? How about dinner tonight, winding up at the Abbaye, or one of those places?”

Biffy shook his head.

“It wouldn’t be any good. I’ve tried it. Besides, I’m leaving on the four o’clock train. I have a dinner engagement tomorrow with a man who’s nibbling at that house of mine in Herefordshire.”

“Oh, are you trying to sell that place? I thought you liked it.”

“I did. But the idea of going on living in that great, lonely barn of a house after what has happened appals me, Bertie. So when Sir Roderick Glossop came along⁠—”

“Sir Roderick Glossop! You don’t mean the loony-doctor?”