Like a stage-group in a charade, just glimpsed by some hurried messenger through an open doorway, as he rushes on his way, those two laughing faces at the table lined themselves against his agitation. He even retained enough detachment, as he strode along, to note how easily these children of Dorset made a natural circle for their festivity, from which he was inevitably excluded. Still there arose no flicker of doubt in his mind as to the truth of the summons he had received. It tugged at him so hard that before he reached the bookshop he was actually running.⁠ ⁠…

God! There was a man talking to Christie at her door.

He approached them breathless, his heart beating violently. He felt the complete confusion which a person feels when he sees some utterly alien object in possession of a familiar spot!

The stranger was talking in authoritative tones to Christie, who herself stood exactly as he had seen her last.