An odd and improbable alliance, that between Hugh Carnaby and Harvey Rolfe.  Yet in several ways they suited each other.  Old-time memories had a little, not much, to do with it; more of the essence of the matter was their feeling of likeness in difference.  Ten years ago Carnaby felt inclined to call his old school-fellow a ‘cad’; Harvey saw nothing in Hugh but robust snobbishness.  Nowadays they had the pleasant sense of understanding each other on most points, and the result was a good deal of honest mutual admiration.  The one’s physical vigour and adroitness, the other’s active mind, liberal thoughts, studious habits, proved reciprocally attractive.  Though in unlike ways, both were impressively modern.  Of late it had seemed as if the man of open air, checked in his natural courses, thrown back upon his meditations, turned to the student, with hope of guidance in new paths, of counsel amid unfamiliar obstacles.  To the observant Rolfe, his friend’s position abounded in speculative interest.  With the course of years, each had lost many a harsher characteristic, whilst the inner man matured.  That their former relations were gradually being reversed, neither perhaps had consciously noted; but even in the jests which passed between them on Harvey’s arrival this evening, it appeared plainly enough that Hugh Carnaby no longer felt the slightest inclination to regard his friend as an inferior.

The room, called library, contained one small case of books, which dealt with travel and sport.  Furniture of the ordinary kind, still new, told of easy circumstances and domestic comfort.  Round about the walls hung a few paintings and photographs, intermingled with the stuffed heads of animals slain in the chase, notably that of a great ibex with magnificent horns.

‘Come, now, tell me all about it,’ said Rolfe, as he mixed himself a glass of whisky and water.  ’I don’t see that anything has gone from this room.’

‘Don’t you?’ cried his host, with a scornful laugh.  ’Where are my silver-mounted pistols?  Where’s the ibex-hoof made into a paperweight?  And’ —­ he raised his voice to a shout of comical despair —­ ’where’s my cheque-book?’

‘I see.’

’I wish I did.  It must break the record for a neat house-robbery, don’t you think?  And they’ll never be caught —­ I’ll bet you anything you like they won’t.  The job was planned weeks ago; that woman came into the house with no other purpose.’

‘But didn’t your wife know anything about her?’

’What can one know about such people?  There were references, I believe —­ as valuable as references usually are.  She must be an old hand.  But I’m sick of the subject; let’s drop it. —­ You were interrupted, Hollings.  What about that bustard?’