Stanistreet threw him a keen look. "Eh!" he said, making swift inference, and turned to his wife and sister-in-law. "It is nearly twelve now. Forgive me if I hurry you off."
"Patience," said Mrs. Arden indulgently. "Not for worlds would I hinder your weighty affairs, dear old thing, but I sleep more sound o' nights when I know my trinkets are locked up securely in your safe."
With a graceful gesture she unfastened a magnificent necklace and deposited it on the desk.
"Frightful rot," her sister commented from the doorway. "As if anybody would dare break in here."
"Why not?" Mrs. Arden enquired calmly, stripping her fingers of their rings.
"With a watchman patrolling the grounds all night—"
"Letty is sensible," Stanistreet interrupted. "Howson's faithful enough, and these American police dependable, but second-storey men happen in the best-guarded neighbourhoods. Be advised, Adele: leave your things here with Letty's."
"No fear," his wife returned coolly. "Too frightfully weird…."
She drifted across the threshold, then hesitated, a pretty figure of disdainful discontent.
"But really, Colonel Stanistreet is right," Blensop interposed vivaciously.
"What do you imagine I heard to-night? The Lone Wolf is in America!"