It involved the discovery by the higher authorities of his extraordinary powers of organisation, his amazing knowledge of criminology, and the fear that his name inspired in the breasts of evildoers. Delicate and refined young women riding in the park would turn and gaze after his sombre figure and glance significantly at one another.

“That is Commissioner Tibbetts of the CID. Never a day passes but his ruthless hand drags a murderer to the gallows. How black and sinister his life must be! I wish I could get an introduction to him.”

Bones had made many incursions into the realms of crime investigation. They had not been very successful. He had read books on criminology, and had studied learned textbooks in which scientific men with foreign names tabulated the size of criminals’ ears and drew remarkable conclusions from the shapes of their noses. This branch of the study became unpopular when he found, in the shape of Captain Hamilton’s eyebrow, proof positive of homicidal tendencies.

Bones lay stretched in the shade of a little matted verandah before his hut. It was a roasting hot day, with not so much as a breeze from the sea to temper the furnace-like atmosphere of headquarters.

Bones was not asleep. It was equally true that he was not awake. He was arresting a man whose crimes had baffled the police of the world until, misguidedly, he came into the orbit of that lynx-eyed sleuth, “Trailer” Tibbetts of Scotland Yard.

Suddenly the patter of bare feet, and Bones blinked and was awake. It was a lanky, barefooted corporal of Houssas, and he brought his hand stiffly to his scarlet tarbosh.

“There is a canoe from the upper country. I have told the men that they must wait until you have spoken.”

“Eh?” said Bones huskily. “What’s this nonsense? Arrest the man and bring him before me!”

He might have been reciting the Iliad for all the corporal understood, for he was speaking in English.

“Bring them,” he said at last. “And, Mahmet, have you given food to the cluck-cluck?”

“Lord, you said that you yourself would carry food to the cluck-cluck. Water I gave them because they made fearful noises.”

Bones screwed in his eyeglass and glared.

“Bring the men: then take food to the birds which are as the apple of Militini’s eye, being his own aunts turned by enchantment – ” He stopped, remembering Hamilton’s warning. Bones loved fairy stories.

So there came to him M’gula of the Upper Ochori, an old man of forty, with a big head and a wrinkled face.

“I see you, Tibbetti,” he boomed, as he squatted in the hot sunlight.

“I see you, man,” said Bones. “Now, tell me why you have come in your big canoe. Sandi is not with me, having gone to the Isisi country, but I sit in his place and give justice.” This Bones magnificently.

“Lord, I have heard of you and your wise words. From the river-with-one-bank to the mountains of the old king, people speak of you clapping their hands. It is said that you are greater than Sandi, being a magician. For you take things in your hand and they disappear. Also from the air you take silver dollars. Also it is said that from an empty pot you have drawn beautiful things, such as birds and pieces of cloth and small animals.”

Bones coughed a little self-consciously. He had once performed a few conjuring tricks before an awestricken audience. Happily Hamilton knew nothing of this.

“So, lord, I came, knowing that the lord Sandi was going to the Isisi, because I have many thoughts that trouble my mind.”

In a country where men have been known to travel a thousand miles to seek the answer to a riddle, it was not remarkable that one should make the long journey from the Ochori to find relief even from a trivial worry, and Bones waited.

“Lord, I am a man who has lived many years, thinking greatly, but doing little-little. My own brother is chief of K’mana and has a medal about his neck, and men say ‘kwas’ to his judgments. Now I, who am greater than he because of my thoughts, am only a common man. Tell me, Tibbetti, must all men be as they were born?”

Bones began to take an interest.

“Man, what is your name?” And when his visitor had told him: “M’gula, many men have been born common, but have come to greatness. That is well known.”

Warming to his subject, and conscious of the improving character of his lecture, Bones became very voluble. He cited the story of a certain young Corsican officer of artillery who had reached for a throne; he told of a poverty-stricken boy in a rolling-mill (“a wonder of iron” he called him) who had acquired riches; he ransacked and misquoted history to preach the doctrine of opportunism, and M’gula of the Upper Ochori sat motionless, entranced.

“Now I see that you are wiser than M’Shimba, and greater than ghosts,” he said, when Bones had talked himself out.