The door opened.

“Coffee, sir,” announced Jolly, manservant to the Honorable Richard Rollison. He came sedately into the large room which overlooked the tall, grey, gracious houses of Gresham Terrace, Mayfair, and placed a silver tray with silver coffee pot and cups of Sevres china on a small table between the two armchairs.

“Jolly,” said Rollison, “Mr. Mome wants us to buy a farm.”

“I’m sure it would be a very nice farm, sir.” Jolly was elderly to look at, had a lined face, the appearance of the dyspeptic, and the kindly eyes of a sheepdog whose chasing days were over. He was immaculate in black jacket, grey cravat with a diamond pin, and grey striped trousers. “Will that be aU?”

“Not quite. Do we want to buy a farm, by any chance?”

“To tell you the truth, sir,” said Jolly, in a neutral voice, “I do not recall that we have discussed the matter since the year nineteen forty-six, when you may recall that we investigated some unconventional behaviour of fowls at a chicken farm.” The manservant turned solemnly towards one long, high wall, which was unique not only in London but in the whole wide world. This was the Trophy Wall. Secured to it in a variety of ingenious ways, were souvenirs of the many cases in which Rollison had been involved as chief investigator. This had not always been with the approval of the police.

Montagu Montmorency home watched Jolly and the wall as if he was hypnotised. He saw the hangman’s rope, against which Jolly brushed, to make it swing with almost ghoulish slowness. He saw the lipstick container which hid poison, the palm-guns, the knives which ranged from carving knife to a genuine Toledo stiletto, the blunt instruments the tubes of poison, the nylon stockings and the pieces of string—each of these in some way or other a lethal weapon. And he saw the top hat with a bullet hole through the crown and a few of Rollison’s hairs stuck to it, actually cut off by the bullet. There were other things, among them a cellophane envelope inside which were a dozen or so brightly-coloured feathers from the neck of a Rhode Island Red.