“It’s always,” Grimshaw said, “whether the man—a perfect stranger—rang up your telephone number.”
Etta Stackpole said: “Ah! ...”
She sat silent for a long time, looking down at the ground, Grimshaw standing before her and looking musingly at her face.
“Well, what is it you want to know?”
“I want to know,” he said, “what happened on the night he saw you home.”
“I didn’t think,” she said expressionlessly, “that you could play the cad as well as the private detective.”
Robert Grimshaw uttered sharply the one word, “Rot!”
“Well, it’s a cad’s question, and you must have played the private detective to know that he saw me home.”
“My dear woman,” he said, “don’t the Phyllis Trevors know it, and Mme. de Mauvesine, and Mme. de Bogota, and half London. I am not making any accusations.”
“I don’t care a pin if you are,” she said.