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Rh yelping like kennels at feeding-time, and two or three of the waiters who were carrying dishes down the path with the grass carpet caught sight of me as I sped under the trees and raised a squall. Chu-Chu had drilled me through the shoulder and sliced me through the arm, and before I'd gone fifty metres my head began to swim. The shoulder didn't bother me a bit, but the blood was welling out of my arm rich and red, and I knew he'd got an artery. So I pulled up for a minute and tugged off my tie and twisted it round a couple of times, tying it with hand and teeth; and hardly had I got it fast when things began to get black and I had to stretch out on the ground, knowing that unless I did I was pretty sure to flop.

The faintness passed in a few moments, and I shoved up my head to look and listen. I was lying in a heavy clump of ivy that covered not only the ground, but the trees and shrubs thereabout, and made a splendid cover. Voices were shouting from here and there, and the hum from the house was like a beehive kicked over. Somebody was crashing round in the underbrush not far away, but out of sight from where I lay. You know how jungly and overgrown these French places get, so different from the spick-and-span English ones.

It was a bad look-out for me, as I knew that some of the people would have run out into the road; but all hands would be looking for a man in a tweed knickerbocker suit, according to the descriptions of the footman and the waiter who had sighted me as I burst from the house. So as quickly as I could I climbed into my long black soutane, round hat and