her eyes wandered over towards Bennett, and a rather startled expression crept into them: instantly veiled as at some thought she did not wish seen. "Here. There; I don't remember. Anyway, what was I saying? Yes. Marcia wouldn't let the men stay at table after we'd left, and on the way through the passages to the library he came behind the others and took my arm." She began to laugh again until she had to put her handkerchief to her eyes. "I say, it was so jolly funny because you couldn't understand what the blighter was about for a minute; all he could do was sort of mutter out of the side of his mouth, `What about it, baby?' After a minute I knew what he meant from the way they always say that in the films; but I said, `What about what?' And he said, `Come off that; they understand it in the States,' in rather a tired way. And I said, `Yes, they understand it over here, too, but you've got to make your approach in a very different way if you want to get anywhere in England."'
Maurice Bohun involuntarily said, "Good God!" and Bennett, also involuntarily, said, "Great!" Maurice leaned a little forward.
"This, I think," he said, quietly, "is a really remarkable statement from you, in equally remarkable language. I shall have to take measures towards seeing that your mode of expressing yourself, either to me or to our guests"
"Oh, you go to the devil!" she said, whirling on him and blazing at him at last. "I'll say what I jolly well please!"
"No," said Maurice after a pause, and smiled gently. "You will go to your room, I think."
"Now I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Bohun," interposed Masters, in a voice of very cool sanity. "I've got no wish to interfere in, um, domestic matters. Eh? But I'm getting a bit tired of this too. This isn't a domestic matter. It's a murder case. And when it comes to ordering witnesses about. Oh, ah. Sit still, Miss Bohun. Go on, please: what were you saying?"
Maurice got to his feet. "Then perhaps you wouldn't mind," he said, his voice slightly shrill, "if my niece gave me permission to go to my room?"
"I shall want to speak to you presently, sir," said Masters urbanely. "But if your niece sees no reason — just so. Thank you"
Maurice gestured to Thompson, who swiftly picked up his gold-headed stick from the floor. Maurice was white with a smiling, deadly, lightly-sweating fury; and his eyes had the dead look of a wax-work figure's.
He said: "I confess I had never been aware that the police, those sometimes useful servants of the superior classes, were in the habit of encouraging children to talk in the fashion of — ha — sluts. I cannot, of course, allow this to pass unnoticed, on the part of either one of you. It has been my habit to enforce implicit obedience in this house, to the end that my own comfort might be maintained, and I should be foolish if I permitted the slightest imputation of that authority to pass unchallenged. Should I not?" He smiled delicately. "You will deeply regret your failure to minister to my comfort, Kate."