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another canape.
    Vega clapped her hands. “Johnny!” she exclaimed, and gave a little screech of delight. “Do you hear? Our Apollo protects the garden!”
    â€œSplendid,” said Johnny.
    â€œDo anything about Japanese beetles?” mumbled Walter Drummond. “If so, might lend him to us.”
    â€œI wouldn’t let Johnny lend him to anybody,” cried Vega.
    â€œWe need him here,” agreed Johnny. “Especially if he does do anything about Japanese beetles. Does he, Gamadge?”
    â€œNot that I know of,” replied Gamadge. “Field mice, just field mice.”
    David Malcolm showed amusement. He turned to his sister. “This really seems to be a nice man, Cora,” he said. “A very nice man.”
    Johnny burst out laughing. “Ever so nice, Dave,’ he chuckled. “And the soul of urbanity, too—unless he’s crossed. When he’s crossed, he’s poison.”
    â€œWell, really!” said Miss Ryder. “I don’t flatter people. I never flatter my own relations; but I must say that a more foolishly good-natured creature than Henry Gamadge I don’t believe exists on earth.”
    â€œThank you, Abby,” said Gamadge, in a meek voice.
    â€œI agree with you, Abigail; we find him so,” said Johnny. “But then we haven’t committed any crimes.”
    â€œI thought Mr. Gamadge liked crimes,” said Malcolm, in a tone of faint surprise.
    Cora said: “We thought he took only an academic interest in them. Oh dear. Does he live to avenge them? Then he can’t be so nice after all.”
    â€œOnce in a while a crime hits me the wrong way,” said Gamadge diffidently. “I’ve had a little luck with some of those.”
    â€œAnd we never knew you were a practicing private policeman!” Malcolm sighed.
    Miss Ryder, very cross at all this, turned abruptly to the guest of honor: “Where did your sun god come from, Mrs. Malcolm?”
    â€œYou’d never, never guess! Would she, Johnny?”
    â€œNever, never. Tell her.”
    â€œIt came off a bandwagon!”
    â€œA bandwagon?”
    â€œA circus wagon.”
    â€œWell, I’ll be hanged.” Gamadge was amused. “That ought to take the blight off for you, Abby.”
    â€œIt partly does,” admitted Miss Ryder. “But where on earth did you find the circus wagon?”
    â€œWell, as a matter of fact I only found that relic of it,” said Redfield. “Many years ago, in a farmer’s barn. I was looking for some seasoned pine I heard he had there, and in a corner, propped up among wagon wheels and old metal, was the god. It seems that a little traveling circus came to grief in that vicinity, in the Eighties, and disintegrated where it stood. The Apollo had been gilt and painted, and the farmer’s father rescued it. Well he rather fascinated me; I saw him with his lyre in his hands, you know, tottering along in all his splendor, drawn by six white, caparisoned horses, to the strains of the calliope. In fact he may have been on the calliope. Well: he was now battered, in eclipse; but I couldn’t resist him. I brought him home and stored him in the lumber room off the garage. I had had some vague idea of putting him up in the kitchen garden, among the sunflowers; but when my aunt here caught sight of him—she was on a tour of inspection, viewing the old domain and all its improvements—nothing would satisfy her but to establish him among the roses.”
    â€œI still think that was a mistake,” said Miss Ryder “but I’m glad to find that it was only a mistake, and that you haven’t gone crazy.”
    Cora Malcolm remarked that such a figure was a period piece, and that she’d rather like to see it.
    â€œHas a little effect of something dug up, I must admit,” confessed Redfield, “and I haven’t promised my dear Aunt Josephine—Vega—to keep it