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time. It took all of her powers of self-possession- a considerable resource, strengthened through a lifetime of nearly continuous exercise-to refrain from crossing the room and taking his battered dark head in her arms, if only to smooth the disorder of his thick black mat of hair.
    The two policemen, communicants of Mr. Panicker, Noakes and Woollett as she at last succeeded in putting names to them, stood blinking at the old man as if there were a bit of breakfast clinging to his lip.
    "Had a fall," said the one she believed to be Noakes.
    Woollett nodded. "Bad luck, that," he said.
    "Indeed," the old man said. The expression drained from his face as he made another of his long, deep examinations, this time of the outraged face of her son, who stared back at the old man with a look of hatred that failed to astonish her, any more than she was surprised when in the end Reggie's gaze faltered, and he stared down, looking much younger than his twenty-two years, at his skinny brown wrists crossed in his lap.
    "What's she doing here?" he said at last.
    "Your mother has brought a few personal articles," the old man said. "I'm sure they will be welcome. But if you like, I will ask her to wait outside."
    Reggie looked up, at her, and in his pout there was something that resembled thanks, a sardonic gratitude as if perhaps she were not quite as horrid a mother as he had always believed. Though in her own accounting-and she was not generous with herself-she had never failed him, every time she stood by him he seemed to view it with the same skeptical surprise.
    "I don't give a damn what she does," he said.
    "No," the old man said dryly. "No, I don't suppose you do. Now. Hah. Hmm. Yes. All right. Tell me, why don't you, about your friend Mr. Black, of Club Row."
    "There's nothing to tell," Reggie said. "Don't know the bloke."
    "Mr. Panicker," the old man said. "I am eighty-nine years old. The little life that remains to me I would much prefer to spend in the company of creatures far more intelligent and mysterious than you. Therefore, in the interest of conserving the scant time I have, allow me to tell you about Mr. Black of Club Row. Word has lately reached his ear, I imagine, of a remarkable parrot, mature and in good health, with a gift for mimicry and a retentive mind far beyond the norm for its species. Were it his, our Mr. Black might sell this bird to a British or Continental fancier for a handsome sum. You had made up your mind, therefore, and got everything in readiness, to steal the bird and sell it to him, in the hopes of raising a large sum of cash. Which cash, if I am not mistaken, you require to repay the debt you have incurred to Fatty Hodges."
    The words were spoken and left behind before her thoughts could catch up to them or to the instantaneous jolt they had sent straight through her. Fatty Hodges was by every reckoning and general acclaim the worst man on the South Downs. There was no telling what kind of mischief he had got Reggie up to.
    Noakes and Woollet stared; Reggie stared; they all stared. How could he possibly have known?
    "My bees fly everywhere," the old man said. He flexed his neck and rubbed his hands together with a dry rasp. A conjuror with cards, after the ace has been produced. "And they see everyone."
    His conclusion, that his bees told him everything, he left unspoken. She supposed he feared it would have sounded mad; he was widely held to be quite batty.
    "Alas, before you could steal the beloved pet and sole friend of a lonely refugee orphan, you were beaten to the punch by Mr. Shane, the lodger. But as he was about to make off with the bird, Shane was attacked and killed. Now we arrive at the place, or I should say at one place, where the police and I differ. For clearly we also differ as to the advisability of beating the Crown's prisoners, in particular those who have not yet been convicted."
    Oh, she thought, what a fine old man this is! Over his bearing, his speech, the tweed suit and