“We will have long talks, you and my uncle!” he said and beamed round on his hostess. “Tell me, little one, have I changed? Ah, but I was a boy then, a weak, vacillating ignorant boy. I did not realize that to win a woman she must be carried off her feet. To whine and wail for her, that is no good; to be diffident and timid—that is no good. To sigh at her feet bores her, to be humble arouses the greatest contempt ... women desire in men the grand manner, biff, bang, boff!”
“Uncle has to go now to ... to feed the chickens,” said Diana hurriedly.
Mr. Guiseppi Dempsi must neither biff, bang nor boff at 61 Cheynel Gardens. Dismayed she realized how broken were the reeds on which she had leant. They also were to know. She came into the kitchen after them.
“You’re no good, either of you,” she was in despair. “I suppose you’re good crooks, but that is because you haven’t the brains to be anything else. You stood like wax figures from the Chamber of Horrors and did nothing!”
“What were we supposed to do?” Gordon was stung into enquiring. “If I’d done what I wanted to do, I’d have thrown the little wop into the street! But you’re master here. You won’t accept a perfectly simple explanation——”
“Your perfectly simple explanation doesn’t go with Aunt Lizzie,” she stopped him in her most imperial manner. “You might have deceived me but for that—be sensible, man. I know you’re Double Dan. I want to use you if I can—if I can’t I’ll send for the police. I’m expecting Mr. Superbus at any moment—you will be under his eye; try to conduct yourself as an uncle would.”
Gordon writhed.
“How can I behave like an uncle when you’re setting an infernal bottle-nosed enquiry agent to watch me?” demanded Gordon hotly. “It is no crime to be an uncle, my good girl! You can’t say ‘Watch that man, he’s my Uncle Isaac!’ By your standard of ethics, an uncle may be a suspicious circumstance, but in this country it isn’t ... what excuse can you give?”
Her lips curled.
“I can say that you are weak-minded,” she said, cold-bloodedly, “and that is just what I am going to say!”