“I’ll admit nothing until I know what the devil you’re driving at,” I replied.
He did not look at me. He was saving himself until he reached the brow-beating stage. But I was watching him—we were walking a yard or two apart—and I noted his expression of simulated indifference and forbearance, as he condescendingly admitted my claim to demand evidence for his preliminary accusation.
“You were very late coming down,” he began and paused, probably to tempt me into some ridicule of such a worthless piece of testimony.
“Go on,” I said.
“You were seen coming into the house after eight o’clock in the morning,” he continued, paused again and then, as I kept silence, added, “In evening dress.”
“Is that all?” I asked.
It was not. He had kept the decisive accusation until the end.
“Your bed had not been slept in,” he concluded wearily, as if to say, “My good idiot, why persist in this damning assumption of innocence?”
“You’ve been examining the servants, I see,” I remarked.
He was not to be drawn by such an ingenuous sneer as that. “The housekeeper told the mater when she came back from church,” he said. “I suppose the thing came up in some arrangement of household affairs.”