"It is owing to the particular shade of blue in the legal papers Mr. Bruce here had in his hand at something to five o'clock that I'm spared being his unintentional murderer."
He mopped his brow with an immaculate handkerchief, the while giving the ladies time to disburden themselves of their ejaculations, then continued his explanation.
"While dressing to start out for the evening, dressing before dinner I'm gratefully able to add, this peculiar quality in blue, the exact thing I've been trying to visualize for my mother's projected scheme in her new Dutch dining-room—foolscap blue shall we call it?—kept recurring to me. As I reached for my scarf-pin, the collusion between the recall and the original came to me with a crash. Mr. Bruce here, our lawyer for the bank, has his private box with us as a sort of special privilege. I'd let him go into the vault to this box after hours, reading a bulk of blue papers as he went, and though I couldn't recall seeing him come out, I'd locked that vault door myself at five o'clock and gone home. I've had him in a drug store for an hour since I got him out. If we'd had a modern vault with one of these new time locks, his end would be on my soul."
Uncle Bruce came into the talk here. The bow to his cravat was at the back of his neck and his beard and hair stood rumpled wildly.
"It was highly important I should finish reading those papers before locking them up. I found myself with only a few matches in my pocket and some loose papers to convert into spills to break the stygian darkness he left me in," he spoke testily.
"Aurelius," said Mamma, slowly and with the careful emphasis one uses to some harmless but trying irresponsible whose attention must be held, "that very delightful Englishman and his secretary are here that Marcus sent the invitation to. Robert is up at your house with them now. It's very necessary we should find out from you what you want to do with them."
Uncle Bruce, little mummified, scholarly person, from his position of temporary collapse on the hall chair, glared at her. He grasped his beard below his chin with an exasperated hand, and his wild rumple of hair seemed almost to lift and stiffen with his irritation.
"Do with 'em? Do with 'em?" said Uncle Bruce with testy finality. "Tell 'em from me to go to the devil."
"Mr. Bruce," said Mamma with dignity, "you forget yourself!"
"Not a bit of it," from Auntie shortly, who had small use for any of the Bruce family.