"Then what evidence have you?"
"I've not even any evidence as yet. But I'm not stirring up this sort of thing without good reason."
"Let's hope not!" retorted Jim.
"My dear Witter, you're actually getting fussy in your old age," said the laughing woman. It was only the solemnity of her husband's face that seemed to sober her. "Can't you see it's absurd? We're all here, safe and sound, and we haven't been robbed."
"But what I want to know," went on the heavier artillery, "is what your reasons are. It seems only right we should inquire what you've got in the shape of evidence."
"What I have wouldn't be admitted as evidence," I confessed.
He threw down his cigarette. It meant as much as throwing up his hands.
"Then what do you expect us to do?"
"I don't expect you to do anything. All I ask is that you let me try to justify this course I've taken, that the three of us dine quietly together. And unless I'm greatly mistaken, before that dinner is over I think I can show you that this man—"
I saw Beatrice Van Tuyl suddenly lift a forefinger to her lip. The motion for silence brought me up short. A moment later I heard the snap of a light-switch in the hallway outside and then the click of jade curtain-rings on their pole. Into the doorway stepped a figure in black, a calm and slow-moving and altogether self-assured figure.