“Let’s stroll round to Lenty Pond, Solent, and tell those lads they can bathe if they want to. It’s bathing they really like,” he added emphatically, “much more than fishing. Good for the rabble, too, don’t you think so, Solent, to learn to swim?”

Wolf could only patiently acquiesce. He did, however, snatch a brief glance at his watch.

“It’s nearly four, Sir,” he said. “You won’t mind if I leave you, after we’ve been over there, and run round to my mother’s?”

The man waved his hand with a negligent, indifferent gesture. It was a mere nothing, this gesture; but in some queer way it rather chilled Wolf’s blood. “It must have been,” he thought to himself, “exactly in that way that the high-priest waved his hand when he uttered the memorable expression, ‘What is that to us ? See thou to that!’ ”