“Ed,” said Miss Peavey with the scorn which her colleague so often excited in her, “try to remember sometimes that that thing balanced on your collar is a head, not a hubbard squash. And be careful what you’re doing with that gat! Waving it about like it was a bouquet or something. How are they going to squeal? They can’t say a thing without telling everyone they snitched the stuff first.”
“That’s right,” admitted Mr. Cootes.
“Well, then, don’t come butting in.”
The silence into which this rebuke plunged Mr. Cootes gave Psmith the opportunity to resume speech. An opportunity of which he was glad, for, while he had nothing of definitely vital import to say, he was optimist enough to feel that his only hope of recovering the necklace was to keep the conversation going on the chance of something turning up. Affable though his manner was, he had never lost sight of the fact that one leap would take him across the space of floor separating him from Mr. Cootes. At present, that small but effective revolver precluded anything in the nature of leaps, however short, but if in the near future anything occurred to divert his adversary’s vigilance even momentarily. . . . He pursued a policy of watchful waiting, and in the meantime started to talk again.
“If, before you go,” he said, “you can spare us a moment of your valuable time, I should be glad of a few words. And, first, may I say that I cordially agree with your condemnation of Comrade Cootes’s recent suggestion. The man is an ass.”
“Say!” cried Mr. Cootes, coming to life again, “that’ll be about all from you. If there wasn’t ladies present, I’d bust you one.”
“Ed,” said Miss Peavey with quiet authority, “shut your trap!”
Mr. Cootes subsided once more. Psmith gazed at him through his monocle, interested.
“Pardon me,” he said, “but—if it is not a rude question—are you two married?”
“Eh?”