tactful
irrelevancies about the delightful evening, the delinquent Carter, and the
foolishness of Sabbatarianism. Mrs. Atkinson appeared in the Hall, cloaked
and muffled, and beckoned to her three replicas. She announced that their
omnibus was "just coming round."

In the general downward drift of dispersion I saw Grace Tattersall looking
up at me with an expression that suggested a desire for the confidential
discussion of scandal, and I hastily whispered to Hughes that we might go
to the extemporised buffet in the supper-room and get a whisky and seltzer
or something. He agreed with an alacrity that I welcomed at the time, but
regret, now, because our retirement into duologue took us out of the
important movement, and I missed one or two essentials of the development.

The truth is that we were all overcome at the moment by an irresistible
desire to appear tactful. We wanted to show the Jervaises that we had not
suspected anything, or that if we had, we didn't mind in the least, and it
certainly wasn't their fault. Nevertheless, I saw no reason why in the
privacy of the supper-room--we had the place to ourselves--I should not
talk to Hughes. I had never before that afternoon met any of the Jervaise
family except Frank, and on one or two occasions his younger brother who
was in the army and, now, in India; and I thought that this was an
appropriate occasion to improve my knowledge. I understood that Hughes was
an old friend of the family.

He may have been, although the fact did not appear in his conversation;
for I discovered almost immediately that he was, either by nature or by
reason of his legal training, cursed with a procrastinating gift of
diplomacy.

"Awkward affair!" I began as soon as we had got our whiskies and lighted
cigarettes.

Hughes drank with a careful slowness, put his glass down with superfluous
accuracy, and then after another instant of tremendous deliberation, said,
"What is?"

"Well, this," I returned gravely.

"Meaning?" he asked judicially.

"Of course it may be too soon to draw an inference," I said.

"Especially with no facts to draw them from," he added.

"All the same," I went on boldly, "it looks horribly suspicious."

"What does?"

I began to lose patience with him. "I'm not suggesting that the Sturtons'
man from the Royal Oak has been murdered," I said.

He weighed that remark as if it might cover a snare, before he scored a
triumph of allusiveness by replying, "Fellow