"No, that's my divine detachment."

"Well, I hope you get pinched for the murder," struck in Sally. "Then what price divine detachment?"

He looked pensive. "It would be awfully interesting," he agreed. "Of course, I should preserve an outward calm, but should I quail beneath it? I hope not: if I did I shouldn't know myself any more, and that would be most uncomfortable."

Helen struck the arm of the sofa with her clenched hand. "Talk, talk, talk! What's the use of it?"

"There is nothing more sordid than the cult of utility," replied Neville. "You have a pedestrian mind, my dear."

"Oh, do shut up!" begged Sally. She went to the sofa, and sat down beside Helen. "Come on, old thing, you'd much better tell me the whole story! If you're in a jam, I'll try and get you out of it."

"You can't," Helen said wretchedly. "Ernie's got IOUs of mine, and the police are bound to discover them, and there'll be a ghastly scandal."

Sally frowned. "IOUs? Why? I mean, how did he get them? What are they for, anyway?"

"Gambling debts. Neville thinks he probably bought them."

"What on earth for?" demanded Sally, the monocle slipping out again.

Neville looked at her admiringly. "The girl has a mind like a pure white lily!" he remarked. "I am now taken aback."

Sally retorted hotly: "I haven't got any such thing! But all this price-of-dishonour business is too utterly vieux jeu! Good Lord, I wouldn't put it in any book of mine!"

"Are you an escapist?" inquired Neville solicitously. "Is that why you write improbable novels? Have you felt the banality of real life to be intolerable?"

"My novels aren't improbable! It may interest you to know that the critics consider me as one of the six most important crime novelists."

"If you think that you're a bad judge of character," said Neville.

Helen gave a strangled shriek of exasperation. "Oh, don't, don't! What does any of that matter at a time like this? What am I to do?"