make sure that the books were in the right places,
to move away to another row of shelves so as to be discovered deep in
"Badminton" or "Baedeker" or whomever the kind gods should send to his
aid the difficulty was not to decide what to do, but to do all this in
five seconds rather than in six.

"Ah, there you are," said Cayley from the doorway.

"Hallo!" said Bill, in surprise, looking up from the fourth volume of
"The Life and Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge." "Have they finished?"

"Finished what?"

"The pond," said Bill, wondering why he was reading Coleridge on such
a fine afternoon. Desperately he tried to think of a good reason....
verifying a quotation--an argument with Antony--that would do. But what
quotation?

"Oh, no. They're still at it. Where's Gillingham?"

'The Ancient Mariner'--water, water, everywhere--or was that something
else? And where was Gillingham? Water, water everywhere...

"Tony? Oh, he's about somewhere. We're just going down to the village.
They aren't finding anything at the pond, are they?"

"No. But they like doing it. Something off their minds when they can say
they've done it."

Bill, deep in his book, looked up and said "Yes," and went back to it
again. He was just getting to the place.

"What's the book?" said Cayley, coming up to him. Out of the corner of
his eye he glanced at the shelf of sermons as he came. Bill saw that
glance and wondered. Was there anything there to give away the secret?

"I was just looking up a quotation," he drawled. "Tony and I had a
bet about it. You know that thing about--er water, water everywhere,
and--er--not a drop to drink." (But what on earth, he wondered to
himself, were they betting about?)

"'Nor any drop to drink,' to be accurate."

Bill looked at him in surprise. Then a happy smile came on his face.

"Quite sure?" he said.

"Of course."

"Then you've saved me a lot of trouble. That's, what the bet was about."
He closed the book with a slam, put it back in its shelf, and began
to feel for his pipe and tobacco. "I was a fool to bet with Tony," he
added. "He always knows that sort of thing."

So far, so good. But here was Cayley still in the library, and there was
Antony, all unsuspecting, in the passage. When Antony came back he would
not be surprised to find the door closed, because the whole object of
his going had been to see if he could open it easily from the inside. At
any moment, then, the bookshelf might swing back