"You gentlemen of England, with your pettifogging conventions and your arrogant righteousness and your old school ties; you whitewashed dummies," he sneered. "You don't care what dirty work is done so long as you don't have to know about it 'officially'; you don't care how many people are murdered so long as you can call it warfare, or dignify it with the adjective 'political.' You don't mind helping to start a civil war in France, in which it's quite certain that numbers of girls will be killed, do you?"
"I tell you that's different," stormed the general. "Why — why, we've had civil wars in England!"
He said it as if that fact proved that civil wars must be all right.
"Very well," Luker went on. "And you didn't object to murdering Kennet and Windlay, did you?"
Fairweather said hoarsely: "We had nothing to do with that. In fact, I told you—"
Lady Sangore's face looked flabby. The powder cracked on her cheeks as her mouth worked. She stammered: "You — you — I never knew—"
"No doubt, like the others, you attributed those deaths to divine intervention," said Luker sarcastically. "I'm sorry to disillusion you. I gave orders for Windlay to be killed. I strangled Kennet myself and started the fire under his room. Your husband and Fairweather knew I was going to do it; you yourself guessed. Therefore at this moment you are all of you already accessories to the crime of murder unless you at once communicate your knowledge to the police. Of course if you do that you may find it hard to explain your silence at the inquest, but the telephone is here on my desk if any of you would care to use it."
Nobody moved. None of them spoke. A paralysis of futility seemed to have taken hold of them, and Luker seemed to gloat over their strangulation. He gave them plenty of time to absorb the consciousness of their own moral impotence while his own rocklike impassivity seemed to deepen with his contempt.
"In that case, I take it that you wish me to continue," he proceeded at length. "My instructions were carried out in part. Templar and Lady Valerie have been captured. Their car was wrecked, and they were both stunned in the crash but otherwise not much harmed."
"Where are they now?" asked Fairweather limply. "Are they in London?"