“The criminal reserves his defence. But it’s most interesting, Padre,
most interesting, as Mrs. Drage says. If I may, I’d like to come and see
that manuscript.”
“I shall be only too delighted,” he murmured with old-fashioned
courtesy. “Whenever you like.”
And then the conversation turned on things parochial until he rose to
go. The others had still not returned, and for a while we two sat on
talking as the spirit moved us in the darkening room. At last the
servants appeared to draw the curtains, and it was then that we heard
Jack and Bill in the hall.
I don’t know what made me make the remark; it seemed to come without my
volition.
“If I were you, Phyllis,” I said, “I don’t think I’d tell the story of
the dining-room to Bill.”
She looked at me curiously.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know—but I wouldn’t.” In the brightly lit room his fears of
the morning seemed ridiculous; yet, as I say, I don’t know what made me
make the remark.
“All right; I won’t,” she said gravely. “Do you think——”
But further conversation was cut short by the entrance of Bill and her
husband.
“Twelve miles if an inch,” growled Drage, throwing himself into a chair.
“You awful fellow.”
Sibton laughed.
“Do you good, you lazy devil. He’s getting too fat, Phyllis, isn’t he?”
I glanced at him as he, too, sat down: in his eyes there remained no
trace of the terror of the morning.