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Old Dower House, Ledward.
    Having provided himself with this succinctly rendered information, Appleby proceeded to digest it as well as he could. For this purpose he established himself in a comfortable chair before the fire. This was no doubt a further stage in the mild impropriety of his conduct. But it was going to be his attitude, he told himself, that he had stood in as caretaker of Ledward until a better turned up.
    It was a fair inference from the record, he supposed, that the owner of the house was Adrian Snodgrass, who had followed the military tradition of his family, left the army for what suggested itself as having been a wandering and adventurous life, and seen no reason to provide the world with any information about his activities for a period of what was now more than ten years. He might be dead – but, if so, it was unlikely that he had been dead for long: otherwise, Who Was Who would be the volume in which his career was chronicled. What else could be inferred about this descendant – as he presumably was – of Augustus Snodgrass Esquire? He didn’t announce himself as having a club, and a London club was a convenience which it would occur to few Englishmen of some substance and of nomadic habit to do without. It was conceivable that the missing latter part of Adrian’s life had landed him in some situation incompatible with continued membership of anything of the sort. This might be so without its following that he was a thoroughly bad hat. There were all sorts of possibilities upon which it was idle to speculate.
    As this went through his mind, Appleby found that he had turned in his chair to take another look at the small boy in the soldier’s uniform. He had a hunch that this was Adrian. In which case the uniform was perhaps a replica of something South American. It was clear from the record that Adrian had spent at least some active years in South America. And this, taken in conjunction with the other Who’s Who entry, suggested that the Snodgrasses were one of those English families which had for some generations maintained contact with relations settled in one or another of the South American states.
    Appleby turned to review the other little life-story he had paused upon. Beddoes Snodgrass was Adrian’s uncle, and he too had been a soldier. But he had exchanged, as Shakespeare put it, the casque for the cushion, and there was every appearance of his having enjoyed a blameless and useful academic career. His book on Brazil was no doubt a standard work. He now appeared to live in retirement on the Ledward estate. The Old Dower House might be a couple of miles away, or it might be no more than a hundred yards. And Adrian’s address was given as care of Professor Snodgrass at Ledward Park itself. It looked as if this elderly character managed his nephew’s house and affairs. At the moment, he seemed not to be looking after them too well.
    It was at this moment that Appleby heard voices.
    He stood up and faced the door, prepared to explain himself. For here, surely, was Beddoes Snodgrass after all. If, as was popularly believed, all professors were absent-minded, then perhaps emeritus professors were liable to an intensification of this condition amounting to intermittent amnesia. Beddoes Snodgrass had been working late in this empty house; he had possibly intended to sleep here; and his own servants had been instructed to prepare a meal and withdraw to the Old Dower House. Later, Snodgrass had obliviously tottered home, gone to bed, and then awakened to the memory that he had neither eaten his dinner, turned out his eccentric blaze of lights, or so much as shut the front door. So here he was back again, accompanied by a retainer who had guided his aged footsteps through the night.
    This would have been an excellent explanation – quite the best and simplest Appleby had thought up yet – but for the fact that his ear had briefly betrayed him. The voices weren’t coming from the