"Well then tell me something about Luke."
"Luke de Mountford," mused the other as if the name recalled some distant impression.
"Yes, Luke de Mountford, who is engaged to Louisa, your niece, man, and she's breaking her heart with all the drivel these newspapers talk and I couldn't bear it any longer; so I've come to you, Tom, and you must tell me what truth there is in the drivel, and that's all I want to know."
Sir Thomas Ryder seemed, whilst the other thus talked volubly, to have suddenly made up his mind to say more than had originally been his intention. Anyway, he now said with abrupt directness:
"If, my good Will, by 'drivel' you mean that in the matter of the assassination of Philip de Mountford, in a taxicab last night, grave suspicion rests on his cousin Luke, then there's a great deal of truth in the drivel."
Colonel Harris received the sudden blow without much apparent emotion. He had been sitting in an arm-chair with one hand buried in his trousers pocket, the other holding the cigar.
Now he merely glanced down at the cigar for a moment and then conveyed it to his lips.
"What," he asked, "does that mean exactly?"
"That unless Luke de Mountford will, within the next forty-eight hours, answer certain questions more satisfactorily than he has done hitherto, he will be arrested on a charge of murder."
"That is impossible," protested Colonel Harris hotly.