CHAPTER I

On this, the third day of his retirement from the Force, Pellison, ex-Detective Inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department, was beginning to realise what it feels like to be a fish out of water. He had nothing to do. During the thirty years of his professional career he had been so strict in the discharge of his duty, so punctilious in doing his work, that he had never learnt to play; the importance of cultivating a hobby had never occurred to him. And now it seemed to him a dreadful thing to rise of a morn…