“Do you ever go in for reconstructing the crime at Scotland Yard?” he asked. “I think now that if we reconstruct our dinner-party, whatever was in my mind then ought to come back to it again. I can’t promise, but by all the rules it should. Now let me see, you were in the middle, weren’t you? And I was there, and my brother away on the left. This chair will have to do for him. You will have to double the parts, if you don’t mind. Would you care for a cigar to complete the illusion? No? Very well. We have got to imagine that we are in the Riviera Hotel, and the gallery will come just about where the edge of the carpet is. Is that right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. Now just prompt me to start with, and we will see what happens. How do I begin?”

“ ‘I always distrusted Ballantine,’ ” Mallett began. “ ‘It would be difficult to say why.’ ”

“ ‘I think, it was his clothes chiefly,’ ” Lord Bernard chimed in.

“ ‘Why his clothes?’ ”

“ ‘Ballantine’s clothes revealed something in his character which I didn’t like.’ ”

“ ‘Surely a millionaire can wear what he likes?’ ”

“ ‘Yes, but why should he be always too well dressed? Or, I should say, over-dressed? He gave me the impression of acting a part?’ ”

Mallett here assumed Lord Henry’s thick voice as best he could.

“ ‘You didn’t see much of him,’ ” he objected.

“ ‘Oh, yes I did—at race meetings, especially.’ ”

“ ‘Naturally, he dressed up for race meetings,’ ” went on Mallett-Gaveston.

“ ‘Ah, but it wasn’t only race meetings.’ ” Lord Bernard began to speak faster and with more and more animation. “ ‘Do you remember taking me down to his place in the country for the dramatic show his staff was giving? He looked a dreadful sight’—or words to that effect—‘and that reminds me——’ ”

So convincing was his acting, that Mallett too was carried away by the part he was playing.

“ ‘By George!’ ” he said enthusiastically, “ ‘there’s a real good-looker down there at last!’ ”

His hand, dramatically extended, pointed, not, as it should have done according to the rules, downwards, but directly at the door in front of him. And, as though in response to a magic incantation, it opened, revealing the prosaic outlines of the butler.

The latter was of the ambassadorial type whose dignity is not easily perturbed. Only by the slightest lift of his eyebrows did he recognize that there was anything irregular in the situation that confronted him. And when he spoke, it was only to say: “Will your lordship require the car to wait any longer?”

“Oh, go away, Waters! Go away!” roared the master, and burst into a fit of laughter.