“Well off, I fancy, but not enormously rich.”
“Then her fortune, I take it, came to her from her husband?”
La Planta had been answering more or less mechanically, for the wine he had drunk had dulled, to some extent, his ordinarily keen intelligence. Now, all at once, he seemed to become alive again.
“You seem greatly interested in Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s private life, Mrs. Hartsilver, and you too, Miss Hagerston,” he said suddenly. “Oddly enough a man you know, in fact it was I who introduced him to you, called to see me only an hour ago for the express purpose of cross-questioning me with regard to the same lady. Merely a coincidence no doubt, but a singular coincidence.”
His tone, as he said this, resembled the tone he had adopted whilst addressing Preston, though it was not quite so marked. Mrs. Hartsilver and Yootha Hagerston winced nevertheless, and presently they changed the subject.
He joined them in the drawing-room about ten minutes later, and half an hour or so afterwards took his departure rather abruptly. Though he had drunk more than was good for him, he knew he had not said anything that he would wish to recall. He walked leisurely down Portland Place in search of a taxi, then decided to walk home.
In Regent Street, as he passed into the halo of light shed down by a street lamp, he came face to face with Stapleton.
“Why Archie,” the latter exclaimed, “I was just thinking of you. Aren’t you dining with Mrs. Hartsilver?”
“I was,” La Planta answered, “but she and Yootha Hagerston rather bored me, so I came away early.”
“Wasn’t it a dinner party?”