That gentleman obliged with another brain-wave. “Do you remember that time when you wondered what a Dean would do if he found a girl in his rooms after the coll. gates were locked, under the impression that she’d been invited to stay till morning, so to speak, Guy? Well, something like that.”
Guy, remembering his innocent curiosity on that point and the means he had taken to gratify it, began to laugh silently, stealing jam with every appearance of joyful guilt. Across his delighted vision strayed the germs of three separate and distinct plans for making an innocent citizen imagine that he had murdered a fellow. “The ordinary man’s reactions to murder, eh?” he chuckled. “It could be done. Upon my soul, it could! What do you say, Doyle?”
What Mr. Doyle should have said is: “Nesbitt, your cocktails were good, your champagne better, your port superlative. Of all have we drunk, and in consequence we are not a little elated. Let us realise the fact, and not toy with fascinating impossibilities.” He said nothing of the sort. What he did say, tersely, was: “Every time! Let’s!”
Guy jumped to his feet, grinning madly. “I think—yes, I think I see it! I shall want a female accomplice. Let’s go and hear what the others have got to say about it.”
They joined the ladies.
There, five minutes later, Guy was being accorded the highest honours, as an enlivener of the tedium of Duffley’s daily round, amid hearty shrieks which effectively drowned the one half-hearted dissentient voice in the room.
“Guy, I hand it to you,” Laura was shrieking. “And to mark the occasion I’m going to create a precedent. I’ve got no vacancy in my inner circle, but I must do something. I’m going to create an entirely extra place for you and make a baker’s dozen of it. Henceforth I am Lawks to you, and Lawks only!”
“Lawks it is!” beamed the gratified Guy, and winked broadly at his wife. “Thank you.”
That lady, watching his narrow back as he drew up chairs for the conference, had no difficulty in correctly interpreting the wink. It said quite plainly: “What price my ideas about feminine psychology now?”
With much ceremony and clinking of glasses (a bottle of Benedictine was specially opened for the occasion and ruthlessly carried into the drawing-room in defiance of all decent convention) Guy was sealed of the tribe of Howard.