I relinquished that argument as hopeless, and having no other at the moment, essayed a weak reprisal. “Well, what’s your explanation?” I asked in the tone of one ready to discount any possible explanation he might have to make.
“It’s obvious,” he returned. “There can be only one. They were expecting us.”
“Do you mean that Miss Banks was deliberately lying to us all the time?” I challenged him with some heat.
“Why that?” he asked.
“Well, if she were expecting us…”
“Which she never denied.”
“And had warned all her people…”
“As she had a perfect right to do.”
“It makes her out a liar, in effect,” I protested. “I mean, she implied, if she didn’t actually state, that she knew nothing whatever of your sister’s movements.”
“Which may have been true,” he remarked in the complacent tone of one who waits to formulate an unimpeachable theory.