"Well" prompted Masters, after a pause. "Why should this — ah — Lord Canifest refuse?"
"Because somebody had been telling him things. Lord Canifest was contemplating matrimony. He had already laid his hand and heart," said Rainger, with an appropriate gesture, "before our lovely nymph. His Lordship, you may know, is a very upright man, and much too discreet to risk anything but marriage. And then somebody told his Lordship something. Bohun was afraid there would be bad news from Canifest last night, and so was Marcia."
Masters cleared his throat. "Just so. I dare say you mean, now, he was told something against Miss Tait's character, eh?"
"What? Oh, God love us, inspector," said Rainger, with a sort of wild helplessness, "your thrice-blessed innocence! No! Don't you suppose Canifest hadn't heard all the rumors of that kind? Her family was good enough for that conduct to have seemed just prankish. Haha, no. What somebody told him, I fear, was that Marcia might have been too virtuous."
"Too virtuous?"
"That she had a husband already," said Rainger, and cackled.
"A husband already!" the chief inspector snapped, after a pause. "Who-?"
Rainger indulged himself in an elaborate Frenchified shrug. He shut one eye, a tubby little Mephistopheles in a bright-flowered robe, and the other staring little bloodshot eye showed through the smoke of his cigar. He smiled.
"How should I know? That part, I grant is theory; but it's mine, and it's a good theory. Now who might that husband be? I wonder. Eh?"
Before Masters could voice a suggestion he went on softly: