"I have my whims," she said. "How would you like a drink?"
"Not at all," he insisted hastily. "I've had all I need for the time being."
"That's a mercy," she replied. "I don't much feel like waiting on you myself, and the servants are all abed."
Offering cigarettes in a golden casket, she selected and lighted one for herself.
"You have servants in the house, then?"
"Do I look like a woman who does her own housework?"
"You do not," he affirmed politely. "But can you blame me for wondering where your servants've been all through this racket?"
"They sleep on the top floor, behind sound-proof doors," his hostess explained complacently, "and have orders to answer only when I ring, even if they should happen to hear anything. I've a passion for privacy in my own home—another whim, if you like."
"It's nothing to me, I assure you," he protested. "Minding my own business is one of the best little things I do."
"If that's so, why do you walk uninvited into strange bedrooms at all hours, pretending to be a policeman, with a cock-and-bull yarn about a burglar—"