“Lock the door,” they whispered.

Roberta locked the door. Henry moved slightly and invited her with a gesture to lie between Frid and himself.

“What’s this in aid of?” asked Roberta.

“Ssh! Listen! Get closer.”

Roberta now saw that this part of the wall consisted of a boarded-up door which evidently had at one time opened into the drawing-room. The Lampreys were listening at the crack. The voices of Lord Charles and his brother could be clearly heard above the comfortable sounds made by the drawing-room fire.

“I’d better not,” breathed Roberta, diffidently.

“It’s all right,” said Frid in her ear. “Daddy wouldn’t mind. Ssh!”

“…so you see,” said Lord Charles’s voice, “it’s been a series of misfortunes rather than any one disaster. The jewellery and objets-d’art idea seemed a capital one. I really couldn’t foresee that poor Stein would shoot himself, you know. Now could I?”

“You go and tie yourself up with some miserable adventurer—”

“No, no, he wasn’t that, Gabriel, really.”

“Why the devil didn’t you make some enquiries?”

“Well I—I did make a good many. The truth is—”

“The truth is,” said Lord Wutherwood’s voice edgily, “you drifted into this business as you have drifted into every conceivable sort of blunder for the last twenty years.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Lord Charles’s voice: “Very well, Gabriel. I’ll take that. It’s quite useless in my predicament to offer excuses. I readily confess that the sort of explanation I have to make would seem quite ridiculous to you.”

“And to anyone else. I may as well tell you at the outset that I can’t do anything about it. I’ve helped you twice before and I might as well have thrown the money into the sea.”

“We were extremely grateful—”

“Is it too much to suggest that you might have shown it by pullin’ yourselves together? I told you then that you should recognise the fact that you were a man with a small income and a large family and should cut your coat accordingly. It’s preposterous, the way you live. Butlers, maids, cars, bringin’ gels out, doin’ the season, trips here, gamblin’ there. Good God, you ought to be livin’ like a—like a clerk or something! Why haven’t you got some post for yourself where you earned a wage? What are those three boys doin’?”

“They’ve tried extremely hard to get jobs.”

“Nonsense. They could have gone into shops since they’re not qualified for any professions. I said when they were at school that they ought to face the facts and work for professions!”

“We couldn’t afford the University.”

“You could afford half a dozen white elephants. You could afford to traipse around the world in luxury liners, you could afford to take that place in the Highlands, entertain, and God know what.”

“My dear Gabriel! The amount of entertaining we do!”

“You dribble money away. Why don’t those gels run the house? Plenty of gels one knows are doin’ that sort of thing. Domestic.”