"Do myself pretty well, don't you think?" he observed quietly, in a break in Liane's dramatic narrative; perforce the lady must now and again pause for breath.
Lanyard smiled in return. "I can't see you've much to complain of."
The captain nodded, but permitted a shade of gravity to become visible in his expression. He sighed a philosophic sigh:
"But man is never satisfied..."
Liane had got her second wind and was playing variations on the theme of the famous six bottles of champagne. Lanyard lounged in his easy chair and let his bored thoughts wander. He was weary of being talked about, wanted one thing only, fulfillment of the promise that had been implicit in Phinuit's manner. He was aware of Phinuit's sympathetic eye.
The woman sent the grey car crashing again into the tree, repeated Lanyard's quaint report of the business, and launched into a vein of panegyric.
"Regard him, then, sitting there, making nothing of it all--!"
"Sheer swank," Phinuit commented. "He's just letting on; privately he thinks he's a heluva fellow. Don't you, Lanyard?"
"But naturally," Lanyard gave Phinuit a grateful look. "That is understood. But what really interests me, at present, is the question: Who is Dupont, and why?"
"If you're asking me," Monk replied, "I'll say--going on mademoiselle's story--Monsieur Dupont is by now a ghost."