"No, I don't," Lord Ellerdine answered; "but what will Admaston think? He is sure to hear of it. I'll bet you a fiver it's known in London to-night. There is always someone on the spot to notice things that go wrong, and this is so suspicious—so damned suspicious, mind you. Why, I don't like the look of it—mind, the look of it—myself."
"Then we must set your conscience at rest, that's all," Collingwood replied.
"How?"
"Well, we must all have a proper, coherent, connected yarn to tell. That's quite simple."
Ellerdine shook his head thoughtfully. "I don't think it will work," he said. "You can't get four people to tell the same yarn without variation. There's sure to be one let it down just where it ought to be kept up."
"If it were a long, complicated yarn, perhaps," said Collingwood; "but I don't mean that at all. Just a plain, unvarnished tale."
"Unvarnished!" the peer replied. "Well, it'll take a deuce of a lot of paint to make this one look all right."
"Not a bit of it," Collingwood replied. "Easy as anything."
Lord Ellerdine went to the fireplace once more and stood with his back to the flames. "Right ho," he said; "go ahead."
"Here you are, then," Collingwood began. "We all got on the wrong train."