‘Then,’ Eames went on, ’he became rather noisome, and we thought we might as well impound the correspondence’—­he wrinkled his swelled left eye—­’and after that, we got him to take a seat in my car.’

‘He was in a sack, you know,’ Trivett explained.  ’He wouldn’t go any other way.  But we didn’t hurt him.’

’Oh no!  His head’s sticking out quite clear, and’—­Eames rushed the fence—­’we’ve put him in your garage—­er pendente lite.’

‘My garage!’ Infant’s voice nearly broke with horror.

‘Well, father always told me if I was in trouble, Uncle George—­’

Bobby’s sentence died away as The Infant collapsed on a divan and said no more than, ‘Your commissions!’ There was a long, long silence.

‘What price your latter-day lime-juice subaltern?’ I whispered to Stalky behind my hand.  His nostrils expanded, and he drummed on the edge of the Japanese jar with his knuckles.

‘Confound your father, Bobby!’ The Infant groaned.  ’Raggin’s a criminal offence these days.  It isn’t as if—­’

‘Come on,’ said Stalky.  ’That was my old Line battalion in Egypt.  They nearly slung old Dhurrah-bags and me out of the Service in ’85 for ragging.’  He descended the stairs and The Infant rolled appealing eyes at him.

‘I heard what you youngsters have confessed,’ he began; and in his orderly-room voice, which is almost as musical as his singing one, he tongue-lashed those lads in such sort as was a privilege and a revelation to listen to.  Till then they had known him almost as a relative—­we were all brevet, deputy, or acting uncles to The Infant’s friends’ brood—­a sympathetic elder brother, sound on finance.  They had never met Colonel A.L.  Corkran in the Chair of Justice.  And while he flayed and rent and blistered, and wiped the floor with them, and while they looked for hiding-places and found none on that floor, I remembered (1) the up-ending of ‘Dolly’ Macshane at Dalhousie, which came perilously near a court-martial on Second-Lieutenant Corkran; (2) the burning of Captain Parmilee’s mosquito-curtains on a hot Indian dawn, when the captain slept in his garden, and Lieutenant Corkran, smoking, rode by after a successful whist night at the club; (3) the introduction of an ekka pony, with ekka attached, into a brother captain’s tent on a frosty night in Peshawur, and the removal of tent, pole, cot, and captain all wrapped in chilly canvas; (4) the bath that was given to Elliot-Hacker on his own verandah—­his lady-love saw it and broke off the engagement, which was what the Mess intended, she being an Eurasian—­and the powdering all over of Elliot-Hacker with flour and turmeric from the bazaar.

When he took breath I realised how only Satan can rebuke sin.  The good don’t know enough.

‘Now,’ said Stalky, ’get out!  No, not out of the house.  Go to your rooms.’

‘I’ll send your dinner, Bobby,’ said The Infant.  ‘Ipps!’

Nothing had ever been known to astonish Ipps, the butler.  He entered and withdrew with his charges.  After all, he had suffered from Bobby since Bobby’s twelfth year.