“A very extraordinary thing has come to light,” Greetland said, with an air befitting the communication. “It is really quite dramatic, and Heaven only knows what will be the end of it.”
“What? What?” Baron de Daun’s temper was impatient of preliminaries, a circumstance which, however, was not so great a drawback as it would seem in his profession, where due weight is given to considerations other than individual fitness.
“You remember,” Greetland proceeded, still deliberately—on his own ground it took more than the representative of a second-rate power to flurry him—“you remember the affair of poor Beauty Martindale?”
“Oh, yes; the poor fellow who died so tragically at the ball at—where was it? Yes?”
To Lady Rotherfield details were unimportant; but to Greetland they had their value. “Vaux House,” he supplied.
“Yes? yes?”
“Let’s see. He was supposed to have died of heart disease, but it was doubted——”
“There was no doubt about it,” de Daun asserted quickly. The subject was too interesting for more diplomatic contradiction.
“Of course,” corroborated Sir Perrott Aspall, who had been in Australia at the time and was consequently well qualified to give an authoritative dictum. “He was murdered, done to death by one of his partners, eh? That’s the idea.”
“I recollect,” put in Mrs. Hargrave breathlessly. “Half the smart women in town were suspected.”