"Yes," said Peter, with a grin, "you always did find him a bit sickenin', didn't you?"

"How can you, Wimsey?" growled Parker reproachfully, with his eyes on Mary's face.

"Never mind him," said the girl. "If you can't be a gentleman, Peter-"

"Damn it all!" cried the invalid explosively. "Here's a fellow who, without the slightest provocation plugs a bullet into my shoulder, breaks my collarbone, brings me up head foremost on a knobbly second-hand brass bedstead and vamooses, and when, in what seems to me jolly mild, parliamentary language, I call him a sickenin' feller, my own sister says I'm no gentleman. Look at me! In my own house, forced to sit here with a perfectly beastly headache, and lap up toast and tea while you people distend and bloat yourselves on mixed grills and omelettes and a damn good vintage claret-"

"Silly boy," said the Duchess, "don't get so excited. And it's time for your medicine. Mr. Parker, kindly touch the bell."

Mr. Parker obeyed in silence. Lady Mary came slowly across, and stood looking at her brother.

"Peter," she said, "what makes you say that he did it?"

"Did what?"

"Shot-you?" The words were only a whisper.

The entrance of Mr. Bunter at this moment with a cooling draught dissipated the tense atmosphere. Lord Peter quaffed his potion, had his pillows rearranged, submitted to have his temperature taken and his pulse counted, asked if he might not have an egg for his lunch, and lit a cigarette. Mr. Bunter retired, people distributed themselves into more comfortable chairs, and felt happier.

"Now, Polly, old girl," said Peter, "cut out the sob-stuff. I accidentally ran into this Goyles chap last night at your Soviet Club. I asked that Miss Tarrant to introduce me, but the minute Goyles heard my name, he made tracks. I rushed out after him, only meanin' to have a word with him, when the idiot stopped at the corner of Newport Court, potted me, and bunked Silly-ass thing to do. I knew who he was. He couldn't help gettin' caught."

"Peter-" said Mary in a ghastly voice.

"Look here, Polly," said Wimsey. "I did think of you. Honest injun, I did. I haven't had the man arrested. I've made no charge at all-have I, Parker? What did you tell 'em to do when you were down at the Yard this morning?"

"To detain Goyles pending inquiries, because he was wanted as a witness in the Riddlesdale case," said Parker slowly.

"He knows nothing about it," said Mary, doggedly now. "He wasn't anywhere near. He is innocent of that!"

"Do you think so?" said Lord Peter gravely. "If you know he is innocent, why tell all these lies to screen him? It won't do, Mary. You know he was there-and you think he is guilty."

"No!"

"Yes," said Wimsey, grasping her with his sound hand as she shrank away. "Mary, have you thought what you are doing? You are perjuring yourself and putting Gerald in peril of his life, in order to shield from justice a man whom you suspect of murdering your lover and who has most certainly tried to murder me."

"Oh," cried Parker, in an agony, "all this interrogation is horribly irregular."

"Never mind him," said Peter. "Do you really think you're doing the right thing, Mary?"

The girl looked helplessly at her brother for a minute or two. Peter cocked up a whimsical, appealing eye from under his bandages. The defiance melted out of her face.

"I'll tell the truth," said Lady Mary.

"Good egg," said Peter, extending a hand. "I'm sorry. I know you like the fellow, and we appreciate your decision enormously. Truly, we do. Now, sail ahead, old thing, and you take it down, Parker."

"Well, it really all started years ago with George. You were at the Front then, Peter, but I suppose they told you about it-and put everything in the worst possible light."

"I wouldn't say that, dear," put in the Duchess. "I think I told Peter that your brother and I were not altogether pleased with what we had seen of the young man-which was not very much, if you remember. He invited himself down one week-end when the house was very full, and he seemed to make a point of consulting nobody's convenience but his own. And you know, dear, you even said yourself you thought he was unnecessarily rude to poor old Lord Mountweazle."

"He said what he thought," said Mary. "Of course, Lord Mountweazle, poor dear, doesn't understand that the present generation is accustomed to discuss things with its elders, not just kow-tow to them. When George gave his opinion, he thought he was just contradicting."

"To be sure," said the Dowager, "when you flatly deny everything a person says it does sound like contradiction to the uninitiated. But all I remember saying to Peter was that Mr. Goyles's manners seemed to me to lack polish, and that he showed a lack of independence in his opinions."

"A lack of independence?" said Mary, wide-eyed.

"Well, dear, I thought so. What oft was thought and frequently much better expressed, as Pope says-or was it somebody else? But the worse you express yourself these days the more profound people think you-though that's nothing new. Like Browning and those quaint metaphysical people, when you never know whether they really mean their mistress or the Established Church, so bridegroomy and biblical-to say nothing of dear S. Augustine-the Hippo man, I mean not the one who missionised over here, though I daresay he was delightful too, and in those days I suppose they didn't have annual sales of work and tea in the parish room, so it doesn't seem quite like what we mean nowadays by missionaries-he knew all about it-you remember about that mandrake-or is that the thing you had to get a big black dog for? Manichee, that's the word. What was his name? Was it Faustus? Or am I mixing him up with the old man in the opera?"

"Well, anyway," said Mary, without stopping to disentangle the Duchess's sequence of ideas, "George was the only person I really cared about-he still is. Only it did seem so hopeless. Perhaps you didn't say much about him, mother, but Gerald said lots-dreadful things!"

"Yes," said the Duchess, "he said what he thought. The present generation does, you know. To the uninitiated, I admit, dear, it does sound a little rude."

Peter grinned, but Mary went on unheeding.

"George had simply no money. He'd really given everything he had to the Labour Party one way and another, and he'd lost his job in the Ministry of Information: they found he had too much sympathy with the Socialists abroad. It was awfully unfair. Anyhow, one couldn't be a burden on him; and Gerald was a beast, and said he'd absolutely stop my allowance if I didn't send George away. So I did, but of course it didn't make a bit of difference to the way we both felt. I'll say for mother she was a bit more decent. She said she'd help us if George got a job; but, as I pointed out if George got a job we shouldn't need helping!"

"But my dear, I could hardly insult Mr. Goyles by suggesting that he should live on his mother-in-law," said the Dowager.

"Why not?" said Mary. "George doesn't believe in those old-fashioned ideas about property. Besides, if you'd given it to me, it would be my money. We believe in men and women being equal. Why should the one always be the bread-winner more than the other?"

"I can't imagine, dear," said the Dowager. "Still, I could hardly expect poor Mr. Goyles to live on unearned increment when he didn't believe in inherited property."

"That's a fallacy," said Mary, rather vaguely. "Anyhow," she added hastily, "that's what happened. Then, after the war, George went to Germany to study Socialism and Labour questions there, and nothing seemed any good. So when Denis Cathcart turned up, I said I'd marry him."

"Why?" asked Peter. "He never sounded to me a bit the kind of bloke for you. I mean, as far as I could make out, he was Tory and diplomatic and-well, quite crusted old tawny, so to speak, I shouldn't have thought you had an idea in common."