mmer electric hare doing their
stuff on a circular track for the entertainment of the many-headed.

This, it appeared, had taken it out of him a bit, and I was not
displeased. I was feeling the strain myself, and welcomed a lull.

"It absolutely beats me why you don't believe it," I said. "You know
we've been pals for years. You must be aware that, except at the moment
when you caused me to do a nose dive into the Drones' swimming bath, an
incident which I long since decided to put out of my mind and let the
dead past bury its dead about, if you follow what I mean--except on that
one occasion, as I say, I have always regarded you with the utmost
esteem. Why, then, if not for the motives I have outlined, should I knock
you to Angela? Answer me that. Be very careful."

"What do you mean, be very careful?"

Well, as a matter of fact, I didn't quite know myself. It was what the
magistrate had said to me on the occasion when I stood in the dock as
Eustace Plimsoll, of The Laburnums: and as it had impressed me a good
deal at the time, I just bunged it in now by way of giving the
conversation a tone.

"All right. Never mind about being careful, then. Just answer me that
question. Why, if I had not your interests sincerely at heart, should I
have ticked you off, as stated?"

A sharp spasm shook him from base to apex. The beetle, which, during the
recent exchanges, had been clinging to his head, hoping for the best,
gave it up at this and resigned office. It shot off and was swallowed in
the night.

"Ah!" I said. "Your beetle," I explained. "No doubt you were unaware of
it, but all this while there has been a beetle of sorts parked on the
side of your head. You have now dislodged it."

He snorted.

"Beetles!"

"Not beetles. One beetle only."

"I like your crust!" cried Tuppy, vibrating like one of Gussie's newts
during the courting season. "Talking of beetles, when all the time you
know you're a treacherous, sneaking hound."

It was a debatable point, of course, why treacherous, sneaking hounds
should be considered ineligible to talk about beetles, and I dare say a
good cross-examining counsel would have made quite a lot of it.

But I let it go.

"That's the second time you've called me that. And," I said firmly, "I
insist on an explanation. I have told you that I acted throughout from
the best and kindliest motives in roasting you to Angela. It cut me to
the quick to have to speak like that, and only the recol