extraordinary spectacle. One, two, three—they counted the strokes. After the eighth, the young man interrupted his self-punishment to run to the wood’s edge and there be violently sick. When he had finished, he picked up the whip and began hitting himself again. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve …

‘Ford!’ whispered the driver. And his twins were of the same opinion.

‘Fordey!’ they said.

Three days later, like turkey buzzards settling on a corpse, the reporters came.

Dried and hardened over a slow fire of green wood, the bow was ready. The Savage was busy on his arrows. Thirty hazel sticks had been whittled and dried, tipped with sharp nails, carefully nocked. He had made a raid one night on the Puttenham poultry farm, and now had feathers enough to equip a whole armoury. It was at work upon the feathering of his shafts that the first of the reporters found him. Noiseless on his pneumatic shoes, the man came up behind him.

‘Good-morning, Mr. Savage,’ he said. ‘I am the representative of The Hourly Radio.’

Startled as though by the bite of a snake, the Savage sprang to his feet, scattering arrows, feathers, glue-pot and brush in all directions.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said the reporter, with genuine compunction. ‘I had no intention …’ He touched his hat—the aluminium stove-pipe hat in which he carried his wireless receiver and transmitter. ‘Excuse my not taking it off,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit heavy. Well, as I was saying, I am the representative of The Hourly …’

‘What do you want?’ asked the Savage, scowling. The reporter returned his most ingratiating smile.

‘Well, of course, our readers would be profoundly interested …’ He put his head on one side, his smile became almost coquettish. ‘Just a few words from you, Mr. Savage.’ And rapidly, with a series of ritual gestures, he uncoiled two wires connected to the portable battery buckled round his waist; plugged them simultaneously into the sides of his aluminium hat; touched a spring on the crown—and antennæ shot up into the air; touched another spring on the peak of the brim—and, like a jack-in-the-box, out jumped a microphone and hung there, quivering, six inches in front of his nose; pulled down a pair of receivers over his ears; pressed a switch on the left side of the hat—and from within came a faint waspy buzzing; turned a knob on the right—and the buzzing was interrupted by a stethoscopic wheeze and crackle, by hiccoughs and sudden squeaks. ‘Hullo,’ he said to the microphone, ‘hullo, hullo …’ A bell suddenly rang inside his hat. ‘Is that you, Edzel? Primo Mellon speaking. Yes, I’ve got hold of him. Mr. Savage will now take the microphone and say a few words. Won’t you, Mr. Savage?’ He looked up at the Savage with another of those winning smiles of his. ‘Just tell our readers why you came here. What made you leave London (hold on, Edzel!) so very suddenly. And, of course, that whip.’ (The Savage started. How did they know about the whip?) ‘We’re all crazy to know about the whip. And then something about Civilization. You know the sort of stuff. “What I think of the Civilized Girl.” Just a few words, a very few …’

The Savage obeyed with a disconcerting literalness. Five words he uttered and no more—five words, the same as those he had said to Bernard about the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury. ‘Háni! Sons éso tse-ná!’ And seizing the reporter by the shoulder, he spun him round (the young man revealed himself invitingly well-covered), aimed and, with all the force and accuracy of a champion foot-and-mouth- baller, delivered a most prodigious kick.

Eight minutes later, a new edition of The Hourly Radio was on sale in the streets of London. ‘Hourly Radio Reporter has Coccyx kicked by Mystery Savage,’ ran the headlines on the front page. ‘Sensation in Surrey.’

‘Sensation even in London,’ thought the reporter when, on his return, he read the words. And a very painful sensation, what was more. He sat down gingerly to his luncheon.