"Look here, Mrs. Carter, I asked poor old Wally to come over and have tea, if he'd nothing better to do, and that's all there was to it."
"Well, I've got a strong notion it wasn't all," said Ermyntrude. "What's more, I'd like to know what that Jones person had got to do with it."
"Really, if I can't invite a couple of friends to tea without being asked why—'
"That's not so, Mr. White, and heaven forbid I should go prying into what doesn't concern me, but it seems a funny thing to me that you should be so anxious to get Wally over to your place - which you won't deny you were, ringing him up no less than three times - if it was only to see him drink a cup of tea. Besides, he was murdered."
"Well, you don't think I murdered him, do you?" retorted White.
The Prince rose, begging his hostess to excuse him. "You wish to speak privately to Mr. White, Trudinka. You will permit me to vanish."
"You needn't vanish on my account," said White. "I've no secrets to talk about."
The Prince, however, bowed himself out of the room; and Ermyntrude announced that she did not believe in beating about the bush. "What I'm asking you, Mr. White, is, had you and Wally got some deal on which I wasn't supposed to know about?"
"Who's been telling you anything about a deal?" asked White suspiciously. "It's news to me!"
"That's as may be, but I hope you aren't going to tell me you haven't gone into a whole lot of deals with Wally in the past, because I wasn't born yesterday!"