"This affair is between the two of us?"
"By God, it is!" said Martin. "And, as Ruth says, you imposed the conditions. Now I impose one."
"Ah!" murmured Stannard, casting up his eyes in sardonic melancholy. "I fear, I very much fear, someone may be backing down again. However, what is the condition?"
"That both of you tell me," Martin replied unexpectedly, "what you know about the death of Sir George Fleet some twenty years ago."
Again there was a silence. Ruth, her dark-brown eyes wide with wonder, merely seemed puzzled. Stannard, his eyes quizzical, seemed to hold behind locked teeth some chuckle which shook his stocky body. It was at this point that Ricky Fleet, his hair troubled by ruffling fingers, came into the library.
"I second that motion," Ricky declared. He went to stand by Martin.
"Ricky, darling!" cried Ruth. He kissed her perfunctorily on the cheek, and pressed her shoulder. All this time his eyes were fixed in a puzzled, troubled way on Stannard.
"But you haven't met Mr. Stannard!" Ruth added, and performed introductions. "How is your mother?"
"Pretty well, thanks. She's taken a sedative. But it hasn't had much effect, and she'll probably be down to dinner. You know—" Ricky tugged his necktie still further in the direction of his ear—"a lot of talk about my governor's death always upsets her. But she never minds a reference or a comment, and we cured her long ago of any dislike about going up to the roof."
Still he was looking in that same puzzled way at Stannard.