The Honourable Tony eyed him for a moment strangely—and then shrugged his shoulders.
“At a corpse—exactly. And there you are!”
“Well, where am I? D’you want me to tell Pattie that all you have to say to her is ‘No, by God’?”
“I want you to tell Pattie just exactly nothing whatever; say that I was off tiger hunting with the Sultan, and that you couldn’t get track of me to save your soul.”
“Thanks; I don’t go in for lies—more especially not with Pattie.”
“I see.” The Honourable Tony, his hands deep in his pockets, evidently saw something not entirely flattering, judging from the curl to his lip. After a minute, however, he dismissed it with another careless shrug. “Oh, spare your conscience by all means. Give Pattie my love, then, and tell her that I’d like most awfully to run up and wipe her out at tennis, but that I’m so indispensable here that I can’t possibly make it.”
“That all?”
“Quite all, thanks.”
“But, good Lord, I tell you that she wants you——”
“You misunderstood her.”