“It sounds thin to me, Wooster, very thin.”

I saw that it would be necessary to apply the finishing touch.

“I must ask you to treat this as entirely confidential, Glossop, but I may as well inform you that it is not twenty-four hours since she turned me down.”

“Turned you down?”

“Like a bedspread. In this very garden.”

“Twenty-four hours?”

“Call it twenty-five. So you will readily see that I can’t be the chap, if any, who stole Angela from you at Cannes.”

And I was on the brink of adding that I wouldn’t touch Angela with a barge pole, when I remembered I had said it already and it hadn’t gone frightfully well. I desisted, therefore.

My manly frankness seemed to be producing good results. The homicidal glare was dying out of Tuppy’s eyes. He had the aspect of a hired assassin who had paused to think things over.

“I see,” he said, at length. “All right, then. Sorry you were troubled.”