Help came from an unexpected quarter. Dora, who had been unwontedly silent during the last half-hour, smiled lazily at her sister. “When are you going to grow up, Lawks?” she asked gently.
Nobody but herself could have posed such a question and retired unscathed. As it was, Laura was half out of her chair before she sank back feebly, turning incredulous eyes up to the ceiling.
“The woman’s nerve’s all gone,” she murmured in a faint voice. “She’s got soft. It’s young love, I suppose. She’ll be asking people to call her Miss Howard soon. Well, Heaven preserve me from ever getting engaged, that’s all!”
“On behalf of the sex,” remarked Mr. Doyle piously, “which I so unworthily represent, Amen!”
Laura’s pose altered abruptly, and her eyes sparkled with battle, but before she could translate her feelings into action, Guy, catching a frantic signal from his wife’s eyes, interposed with a change of subject. “Cheer up, George,” he said hastily. “What’s the matter? You look as if you’d committed a murder, and couldn’t decide what to do with the body.”
“I think he’s just seen a ghost, and is being tactful about it,” said Laura, her attention successfully diverted.
George, roused abruptly from his meditations concerning frogs and hose-pipes, smiled wanly. “Me? I’m all right,” he muttered.
“I think you’ve guessed it, Nesbitt,” remarked Doyle, regarding his future brother-in-law closely. “He has committed a murder. How awkward for him! Now I come to look at him, he has got a criminal face, hasn’t he? I wonder what type he belongs to. The Palmer, would you say? He has that look of chubby innocence. But no, he’s too big and massive. Now, who…? Smith, perhaps? Smith was always the gent, wasn’t he?” He prattled on happily. Thus great events from causes small do spring.
In Guy’s eyes an eager light had appeared, the light that must have gleamed in Stanley’s eyes when he pretended to greet Livingstone so nonchalantly. “I say, Doyle,” he said in hushed tones, “you’re not—you’re not interested in criminology, are you?”
The light leaped into Doyle’s eyes. He looked at his host with reverence and awe. “Are you?” he asked, in the same cathedral-like voice.