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When I had finished tea--tea, and not dinner, is the meal which my housekeeper gives me in the evening--I lit my pipe and went out to the garden to spray a pear tree. I was anxious about that tree because its leaves were curling up in a curious way. I thought that a washing with soapy water might do it good.

I took my nephew, Tommy Graham, with me to do the actual work. Tommy is my sister Jane's eldest boy. He is between sixteen and seventeen years of age, and has reached the fifth form--the lower fifth, I think--at Haileybury. This year, owing to an outbreak of measles among his sisters, he is spending his summer holidays with me. Jane hinted that I might find time to read a little Latin--or, better still, a little Greek--with him every morning. I do not attempt this. I have a high opinion of the classical knowledge of the fifth form public school boy. I am inclined to think that Tommy would lose all respect for me if I attempted to read Plautus with him. I am quite sure that I should come to grief badly over a chorus of "Euripides." But I do something for Tommy's education, I taught him a little about sailing boats last time he was here, and I am going on with the course this year. I have also taught him how to look after bees, and I mean to teach him how to spray pear trees. If Tommy is as intelligent and active at his Greek as he is at sailing and bee-keeping he ought to be in the upper sixth very soon.

I sat on a garden seat at a safe distance and gave orders while Tommy wet himself and the pear tree with soapy water squirted out of a syringe.

Patterson found us engaged in this way when he walked into my garden about nine o'clock. He insisted on my stopping my part of the work and going into the house with him.

"I want to talk to you, Rector," he said.

"Tommy," I said, "go on with the pear tree like a good man. You can't give it too much. When you've finished----"

"Right-o," said Tommy. "I'll do the next one, too. And, I say, Uncle Terence, I suppose I can have that thriller about the man who murdered the Prime Minister to read in bed? I shall have to go to bed early if you and Mr. Patterson are going to talk secrets."

I wanted that thriller myself. It had just come from the library, and detective fiction is my favourite kind of reading. But when Tommy actually proposed to go to bed rather than interrupt Patterson and me. I felt that he had a good claim on the book. Tommy is a very tactful boy and is seldom in the way. I fancy that my talks with Patterson do not interest him much. I dare say he would rather go to bed than sit listening to us. Still, he ought to have the book.

Patterson made a sort of apology for dragging me away from Tommy and the pear tree.

"There's nobody except you in this infernal place that I can talk to," he said.

That, I think, is very nearly true. A police officer leads a lonely life in a small Irish town nowadays; and Carrigahooly never was a centre of social life. Under normal circumstances Patterson would probably have made friends with the doctor and with Farrelly, our only solicitor. But the doctor, besides being a very busy man, is a strong Sinn Feiner, which, of course, cuts him off from the police. Farrelly is a Sinn Feiner, too, and made a speech the other day in which he said that the soldiers and the police are members of a murder club. Farrelly is a nice, pleasant-mannered young fellow, and I do not suppose he really meant what he said. But having committed himself to a statement of that kind he cannot well invite Patterson to his house to play cards in the evening. Patterson, who was a soldier before he became a police officer, was hit, so to speak, on both sides of the head by the murder club accusation, and he declined to have anything more to do with Farrelly. I tried to explain to him that a solicitor is dependent for his living on the public, and must say the sort of things people want said. Patterson, unfortunately, cannot understand this point of view. He insists on thinking that Farrelly accused him of planning secret assassinations.

Shut off from the friendship of men of his own class, Patterson might have taken to what is called "low society"--in my opinion the most amusing society there is. He might have made friends with Quin, who won for himself the name of Poacher Quin in the days when there was any game left to poach in this part of the country. Quin is the only man in Carrigahooly who still manages to secure enough whisky to make him drunk, and he is an outcast from Sinn Fein circles. He would not, as he once explained to me, obey the laws when the gentry made them; so it is not to be expected that he would obey laws made by men no better than himself. An independent rebel of this kind finds himself up against Sinn Fein and organised Labour nowadays exactly as he was up against Lord Maghera and his friends before they sold their property and cleared out of the country. Quin would have no objection to associating with a police officer now when a police officer is his fellow outlaw. But Patterson never took to Quin. Nor does he care to go in for an illicit love affair with Quin's daughter Sabina. The girl, though her face is seldom clean, is quite good-looking. She is a servant in Mrs. Maher's "Imperial" Hotel; but she spends a great deal of her time in Patterson's kitchen. She goes there to see her aunt, Mrs. Dever, who is Patterson's housekeeper. She has all her father's dislike of law and contempt for public opinion, so she would quite willingly associate with a policeman or a soldier. But Patterson never speaks to her.

It is not priggishness or any undue preference for respectability which keeps Patterson from making friends with the Quins. It is simply that he doesn't understand the people of this country. He thinks that because Quin is thoroughly disreputable he must be a dangerous rebel, and because Sabina is a wild, ungovernable girl, she is sure to be mixed up with some murder gang. I have tried, but quite vainly, to explain that the genuine Sinn Feiner is respectable to the point of actual primness, and generally a strict teetotaller, no more likely than the secretary of a Y.M.C.A. to be associated with Quin or his daughter. Patterson cannot see this. He absolutely declines to make friends with Quin, and even persecutes the poor man by setting the police on his track and arresting him from time to time for all sorts of trivial offences, such as breaking windows when drunk.

Thus it comes that Patterson leads a lonely life in Carrigahooly, and is driven to seek my society. If he were not very lonely indeed, he would not have made friends with me or have taken to spending three evenings a week in my house. I have neither wife nor daughter to make the house agreeable to him, and I cannot suppose that there is much about a stupid and respectable old country parson to attract a young man who was once at Oxford, afterwards in a cavalry regiment, and is now an officer of police.

Patterson went into my study through the open window, and sat down in my only comfortable chair. I followed him and offered him tobacco. When his pipe was lit he began to talk.

"What do you think of those people who came here in the train to-day?" he asked. "The old man and his daughter--if she is his daughter."

I had not, so far, thought about the Floyds at all. But when Patterson asked me his question I began to see that their visit to Carrigahooly was a matter about which it was possible to speculate.

"What brings them here?" said Patterson.

Ten years ago I should have answered that question without a moment's hesitation. A man with a face like a professor would plainly have been an expert of some sort sent out by the Government to improve the pigs, the poultry, the people, or, perhaps, the soil of Ireland. He might possibly have brought his little daughter with him "to bear him company," as the skipper of the "Hesperus" did, though I do not remember ever meeting an expert with a good-looking daughter. Nowadays, the man could not be an expert, because the Government has given up trying to improve Ireland--in despair, I suppose--and no expert would come to Carrigahooly unless he were sent.

"Perhaps," I said, "they're simply tourists on a holiday."

I knew, even while I said it, that this was absurd. Anyone who has seen even the outside of Mrs. Maher's hotel would know that Carrigahooly is no place for tourist traffic. Patterson very properly ignored the suggestion.

"You saw the man's face," he said. "What did you think of it?"

"Well," I said, "he's evidently a learned man--a professor, I should think. But it's difficult to say exactly what his subject is. Conchology, perhaps, or Arabic. Something rather recondite that isn't much use for Civil Service exams."

"He looks to me like an Intellectual," said Patterson; "one of the Intelligentsia, quite the most dangerous class in the community. Those fellows--they're mostly poets--are at the bottom of half the crime in the country, though they keep their own skins safe enough. It's always the same. Look at the French Revolution. Look at Russia to-day."

The part taken by Intellectuals in revolutions is a favourite subject with Patterson. I've known him talk about it for two hours without stopping, and I do not deny that he has a good deal to say for his point of view. He knows a lot about the French Revolution, which seems to have been a popular study in the Oxford History Schools before the war. And he says he knows all about Russia. He is quite interesting when he works out the connection between the writings of Russian novelists with difficult names and the actual performances of the Bolsheviks. But I had heard it all before, several times, and I did not want to hear it again.

"The girl," I said, "seemed to me quite pretty. And she did not look in the least as if she wrote plays."

"She's good-looking enough," said Patterson. "But lots of these revolutionary women are, to start with, anyhow. They go off a bit in the matter of appearance after a year or two of that racket."

With the memory of some recent heroines of Irish Nationalism fresh in my mind I could scarcely argue that pretty ladies are never revolutionaries. But I put in a word for the girl we had met in the railway carriage.

"She looked to me," I said, "as if she was out simply to enjoy herself."

I thought that Patterson would go on talking about the girl and that I should get off listening to a scathing denunciation of the unfortunate Intellectuals. But Patterson is not easily switched off his subject.

"People in places like this," he said, "are quiet enough if they're let alone. They form clubs, of course, and sing songs and wave flags. But----"

"Mrs. Maher," I said, "keeps a Sinn Fein flag flying day and night over the door of her hotel."

"Exactly," said Patterson. "But she doesn't mean anything by it. Nor does anyone else down here. But sooner or later somebody will come down from Dublin, one of their damned Intellectuals--excuse my swearing, won't you, Rector?"

I waved an acceptance of his apology for saying "damn." The word, after all, is in the Prayer Book, and if our Irish Intellectuals are as bad as Patterson thinks them they deserve it--and more.

"One of them will come down from Dublin," said Patterson, "and ask why they haven't shot the sergeant or me. Then they will shoot us, just to preserve their self-respect and to keep up the good name of the town."

"And you think," I said, "that the old gentleman in the railway carriage----"

"Floyd is his name," said Patterson; "and you're quite right about his being a professor. Celtic Archæology is what he goes in for."

I know that Patterson is deeply suspicious of anything Celtic.

"He's an LL.D., too," Patterson went on. "I sent a man down to the hotel to inquire about him."

"If he's really an LL.D.," I said, "he ought to have some respect for law."

I did not really think this. That particular degree is--like the O.B.E.--a distinction given for almost any reason. I knew a man once who was given it honoris causa by an appreciative university because he had made an exhaustive study of the habits of the Soudanese, a subject utterly unconnected with any law. Indeed, almost the only people who are never presented with the degree of LL.D. are lawyers.

"First thing he did after arriving this evening, or rather the first thing the girl did, was to start making inquiries about how to get out to Inisheeny. Now, what do you think they want to go there for?"

I could not think of any reason why the Floyds, or anybody else, should want to go to Inisheeny. It is a thoroughly uninteresting island, which lies eight miles out from Carrigahooly, across the mouth of our bay. It possesses no attractions in the way of scenery, being almost flat, so flat that I often wonder the ocean does not sweep over it during the winter and make a sandbank of it. It is inhabited by six families of Flanagans, who grow potatoes, own a few lean cattle, and fish. They make a little money out of lobsters, which Mrs. Maher buys from them. They are all related to each other by complicated and repeated intermarriages, and my friend Poacher Quin belongs to their clan. His mother came from the island and married a small farmer near Carrigahooly. Poacher Quin still owns the farm, but has never managed to do well with it. I daresay it is the island blood in him which makes it so difficult for him to adapt himself to the higher civilisation of the mainland.

Inisheeny lies within Patterson's jurisdiction, and he is, I know, deeply suspicious of the island and its inhabitants. He has an idea that the place is used by some foreign foe--Russian Bolsheviks, perhaps--for landing arms intended for use in our next full-dress rebellion.

"There's something going on in that island," said Patterson; "and I've never been able to get at the bottom of it. These Floyds, whoever they are, are evidently in it. They must be up to some mischief or they wouldn't want to go there. Nobody ever went to Inisheeny for pleasure."

"Oh, come now," I said, "I go there myself three or four times every summer. I was there last week."

"Oh, you! You don't go for pleasure. You go to buy lobsters."

"Lobsters are a pleasure to me," I said; "and you seem to like them when you get them."

By buying lobsters a couple of dozen at a time direct from the islanders I get them a great deal cheaper than I should by waiting till Mrs. Maher bought them and made her profit. And I like sailing out to the island. The "Aurora," in spite of what Patterson says about her jib sheets, is a good, safe sea-boat, and there is secure anchorage in the bay on the east side of Inisheeny. I sometimes go and return on the same day. Sometimes I spend the night there. There was a time--not so very many years ago--when I sailed the "Aurora" single-handed. Lately I have begun to find the ground tackle rather heavy for me and the working of the head sail-sheets a bit tiring in a beat to windward so I generally take Poacher Quin with me now. He is excellent company, and is glad of the chance of visiting his relatives on the island. I can scarcely call him a paid hand, for he makes no charge for his services. I allow him to bring back creels of lobsters packed with seaweed, and sometimes boxes of mackerel or herrings, which he disposes of to Mrs. Maher. In this way my "Aurora" serves a useful purpose in developing the trade of the island, and I am able to feel that my sails are not mere pleasure trips.

"Anyhow," I said, "if the Floyds want to go to the island you can't stop them."

Patterson bit at his pipe viciously, and his face wore a very determined expression. I began to think that he meant to arrest the Floyds.

"I know you police have large powers nowadays," I said, "and I suppose if you choose to raid Mrs. Maher's hotel to-night and carry off the Floyds you can, but I hope you won't. We are all living peaceably and quietly down here, and if you do a thing like that you'll stir up all sorts of bad feeling."

"I'm not going to do that," said Patterson, "but I am going to keep my eye on them, especially if they go out to Inisheeny. I suppose you won't mind lending me the 'Aurora' in case I want to go after them?"

"I'll lend you the 'Aurora' with pleasure," I said, "any time you want her. But do remember that she's not a battleship. The jib sheets may not be as bad as you say----"

"They're rotten."

"Even so, they won't be improved, nor will the rest of the gear, if you get up a sea-fight with the Flanagans. They'd swarm round you in their curraghs, you know, and think nothing of slashing every rope in her with knives."

"Oh, I'm not going to fight anyone," said Patterson. "I'm simply going to watch those people to see what they're at."

"Very well," I said, "you can have her; but I don't think I'll go with you."

Patterson can sail the "Aurora" perfectly well by himself, and he has, as I happen to know, at least one policeman under his command who knows something about boats. So I felt that there was no need for anxiety.

We talked on, chiefly about revolutions and secret societies, till the clock on my study chimney-piece struck ten. Then Patterson knocked the ashes out of his pipe and went home.

Taking into consideration the hour of summer time which has been imposed on us, the half-hour of Irish time which was filched from us without our noticing it during the war, and the fact that Carrigahooly is nearly two hundred miles west of Dublin, I reckoned that it was in reality only about eight o'clock when the clock struck ten. I suppose I might have gone on spraying my pear tree, but Tommy had gone to bed, and I did not feel inclined to splash about in soap-suds by myself. I read the newspaper till eleven o'clock. By that time I thought Tommy must have gone to sleep and I might get the detective story. I went very cautiously into his room. The murder of the Prime Minister cannot have been as exciting as he expected. The book lay on the floor beside his bed. He was sleeping profoundly.

I sat up till one o'clock and finished the story. The Prime Minister was not murdered after all--only kidnapped--but the work of the detective, an amateur of course, who brought the villain to justice, was thoroughly satisfying. After following up the slenderest and most unlikely clues for two hours I felt inclined to agree with Patterson that Floyd and his pretty daughter were plotters of a dark and dangerous kind. The man who kidnapped the Prime Minister was a professor--medical--and he had a beautiful daughter with "sinister eyes." Molly's eyes could not be called sinister, but otherwise Patterson was evidently justified in his suspicions.