“Damn him! He must get out of this. I can’t have him within five miles’ distance of my mess and my club!”
“We ought to have let the police take that woman,” fumed Laura. “And Tord ought to be in some kind of home. Hasn’t he even tried to shoot Peter?”
Peter had kept silent the whole time and looked very mysterious. Now he thought the right moment had arrived:
“I was out duck shooting a week or two ago,” he grunted. “It was at a place called Järnö which lies far out at sea. A fine island. And it is for sale. Fancy if we put Tord in a boat and took him out there....”
At that moment somebody stepped into the hall. It was Mrs. Dagmar Selamb in an open fur coat, white silk frock and somewhat down-at-heel shoes. She did not look at all nervous or anxious. There was something light-hearted, something irrepressibly carefree about her:
“How do you do,” she said. “I thought I would call whilst I still had some decent clothes!”
She was greeted by amazed, icy silence.
Dagmar shook her fair mane with a little flash of impatience:
“Perhaps it seems strange that I haven’t brought him with me. He is playing with his Japanese mice, poor fellow, and in his new black evening dress, too! We must excuse him. ‘I won’t go up to those bourgeois!’ he screamed. ‘But I am going,’ I said. ‘They have done nothing to me,’ I said. Well, and here I am. The whole family is assembled, I see....”
Again a few moments of the same silence. Dagmar’s features were at last overshadowed by a certain doubt as to whether she was welcome.