«Dear me!» ejaculated the detective, «you're very dramatic about it.»
Lord Peter passed his hand rather wearily over his hair.
«My true friend,» he murmured, in a voice surcharged with emotion, «you recall me to the nursery rhymes of my youth — the sacred duty of flippancy:
'There was an old man of Whitehaven
Who danced a quadrille with a raven,
But they said: It's absurd
To encourage that bird —
So they smashed that old man of Whitehaven.
That's the correct attitude, Parker. Here's a poor old buffer spirited away — such a joke — and I don't believe he'd hurt a fly himself — that makes it funnier. D'you know, Parker, I don't care frightfully about this case after all.»
«Which, this or yours?»