“Why did you wish to see me?” she asked, baffled by my ready intelligence.
“I hoped to get a few facts concerning your proposed lecture tour in America.”
“How did you know that I was about to lecture in America?” I raised my eyebrows. This was childish.
“They were saying so at the Savage Club,” I replied. Baffled again.
“I had an idea, Mr. Corcoran,” she said, with a nasty gleam in her blue eyes, “that you might be the person alluded to in my nephew Stanley’s telegram.”
“Telegram?”
“Yes. I altered my plans and returned to London last night instead of waiting till this evening, and I had scarcely arrived when a telegram came, signed Ukridge, from the village where I had been staying. It instructed my secretary to hand over to a gentleman who would call this morning the draft of the speech which I am to deliver at the dinner of the Pen and Ink Club. I assume the thing to have been some obscure practical joke on the part of my nephew, Stanley. And I also assumed, Mr. Corcoran, that you must be the gentleman alluded to.”
I could parry this sort of stuff all day.
“What an odd idea!” I said.
“You think it odd? Then why did you tell my butler that my secretary was expecting you?”