Mrs. Bemis: ‘You are too bad, papa! You know it’s little Neddy.’

Mrs. Roberts, vanishing: ‘Oh, I don’t mind his nonsense, Lou. I’ll fetch them both back with me.’

Lawton, after making a melodramatic search for concealed listeners at the doors: ‘Now, friends, I have a revelation to make in Mrs. Roberts’s absence. I have found out the garotter—the assassin.’

All the others: ‘What!’

Lawton: ‘He has been secured—’

Mrs. Crashaw, severely: ‘Well, I’m very glad of it.’

Young Bemis: ‘By the police?’

Mrs. Bemis, incredulously: ‘Papa!’

Bemis: ‘But there were several of them. Have they all been arrested?’

Lawton: ‘There was only one, and none of him has been arrested.’