play. I'll stick to the putter.'
We dropped down the hill, and presently came up with the opposition. I
had not been mistaken in thinking that Ralph Bingham looked complacent.
The man was smirking.
'Playing three hundred and ninety-six,' he said, as we drew near. 'How
are you?'
I consulted my score-card.
'We have played a snappy seven hundred and eleven.' I said.
Ralph exulted openly. Rupert Bailey made no comment. He was too busy
with the alluvial deposits on his person.
'Perhaps you would like to give up the match?' said Ralph to Arthur.
'Tchah!' said Arthur.
'Might just as well.'
'Pah!' said Arthur.
'You can't win now.'
'Pshaw!' said Arthur.
I am aware that Arthur's dialogue might have been brighter, but he had
been through a trying time.
Rupert Bailey sidled up to me.
'I'm going home,' he said.
'Nonsense!' I replied. 'You are in an official capacity. You must stick
to your post. Besides, what could be nicer than a pleasant morning
ramble?'
'Pleasant morning ramble my number nine foot!' he replied, peevishly.
'I want to get back to civilization and set an excavating party with
pickaxes to work on me.'
'You take too gloomy a view of the matter. You are a little dusty.
Nothing more.'
'And it's not only the being buried alive that I mind. I cannot stick
Ralph Bingham much longer.'
'You have found him trying?'
'Trying! Why, after I had fallen into that ditch and was coming up for
the third time, all the man did was simply to call to me to admire an
infernal iron shot he had just made. No sympathy, mind you! Wrapped up
in himself. Why don't you make your man give up the match? He can't
win.'
'I refuse to admit it. Much may happen between here and Royal Square.'
I have seldom known a prophecy more swiftly fulfilled. At this moment
the doors of the Woodfield Garage opened and a small car rolled out
with a grimy young man in a sweater at the wheel. He brought the
machine out into the road, and alighted and went back into the garage,
where we heard him shouting unintelligibly to someone in the rear
premises. The car remained puffing and panting against the kerb.
Engaged in conversation with Rupert Bailey, I was paying little
attention to this evidence of an awakening world, when suddenly I heard
a hoarse, triumphant cry from Arthur Jukes, and, turned, I perceived
his ball dropping neatly into the car's interior. Arthur himself,
brandishing a niblick, was dancing about in the fairway.
'Now what about your moving hazards?' he cried.
At this moment the man in the sweater returned, carrying a spanner.
