"Not quite as bad as that. By Underground. I did realize it wouldn't work to call a taxi."
"You show quite a disposition for fraud, Fentiman."
"Yes, don't I?—Well, all that was easy. I must say, I didn't pass a frightfully good night."
"You'll take it more calmly another time."
"Yes—it was my maiden effort in crime, of course. The next morning——"
"Young man," said Mr. Murbles, in an awful voice, "we will draw a veil over the next morning. I have listened to your shameless statement with a disgust which words cannot express. But I cannot, and I will not sit here and listen while you congratulate yourself, with a cynicism at which you should blush, on having employed those sacred moments when every thought should have been consecrated——"
"Oh, punk!" interrupted Robert, rudely. "My old pals are none the worse because I did a little bit of self-help. I know fraud isn't altogether the clean potato, but, dash it all! surely we have a better right to the old boy's money than that girl. I bet she never did anything in the Great War, Daddy. Well, it's all gone bust—but it was a darn good stunt while it lasted."
"I perceive," replied Mr. Murbles, icily, "that any appeal to your better feelings would be waste of time. I imagine, however, you realize that fraud is a penal offence."
"Yes—that's a nuisance, isn't it? What are we going to do about it? Do I have to go and eat humble pie to old Pritchard? Or does Wimsey pretend to have discovered something frightfully abstruse from looking at the body?—Oh, good lord, by the way—what's happened about that confounded exhumation stunt? I never thought a word more about it. I say, Wimsey, was that the idea? Did you know then that I'd been trying to work this stunt and was it your notion you could get me out of it?"
"Partly."