Presently her recital finished, and she was waiting for his response. He pulled a flowery bandanna from his pocket and blew his nose loudly, and then he turned to her with twinkling grey eyes.
“It’s certainly got the makings of a good story,” he confessed calmly.
“But it happened!” she insisted. “All in a few hours, last night. Surely you must see that there’s something queer in the wind? There’s some foundation to those rumours, but there’s always the chance that the gossips have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Do you think Mr. Templar’s a detective?”
He shrugged.
“Who am I to say? Do detectives behave like that except in detective stories?”
She played crestfallen, looking at him appealingly.
“You must know a lot about detectives, and if you say they don’t . . . then I suppose he’s a crook. But I can’t believe that!”
“If a crook couldn’t convince people that he was honest,” Lapping pointed out, “he’d have to give up the game and go into the workhouse.”
“But Mr. Templar’s different.”
“They always are,” said Lapping cynically.