"Don't be so absurd! There hasn't been an accident, has there?"

"Of course there hasn't been an accident!" said Steel testily.

"Oh no, of course there hasn't!" said Wally. "I've only had a couple of barrels fired at me."

"If a man's fool enough to move from his stand, he's asking to be shot!" said Steel.

"Yes, that's what you say, and I've no doubt you'll go saying it however many times I tell you I didn't do anything."

Dr Chester, a quiet-voiced man of about forty, interposed before Steel could reply. "My dear Carter, you must have moved. Why go on arguing about it? Happily, there's no harm done."

Wally was greatly offended by this, and demanded to be told whether he could have moved without having been aware of it.

"Obviously, if you are unaware of it," said the doctor calmly. "How are you, Mary? Where's that young baggage, Vicky? Not coming?"

"No, she's gone out with Alan White." Mary drew him a little away from the group. "What really happened, Maurice?"

"Nothing much. Without wishing to offend you, your cousin is about the most unsafe man on a shoot I've ever encountered. Instead of staying where he was posted, he seems to have wandered along the hedge, and nearly got shot."

"Who by?" Mary asked, a vague, unacknowledged fear prompting the sharp question.

The level grey eyes scanned her face for one enigmatic moment. "Probably by Steel, or Varasashvili. Why?"

"Oh, no reason!" Mary said. "I only wondered. It sounds just like Wally to drift aimlessly about. He probably didn't know he was doing it. Is the Prince a good shot?"

"Yes, very."

He seemed to be in a more than usually uncommunicative mood. Mary moved away from him to mingle with the rest of the party, and found Wally being voluble on the subject of what seemed, in his mind, to have become a deliberate attack upon him. He threw out so many dark hints about those who would be glad to see him underground that even the Prince's smile grew to be a little forced, while Steel could only control his rising anger by starting a determined conversation with his hostess.