Ah, Matey, I wish this telegram sent.
MATEY (a general favourite). Very good, ma'am. The village post office closed at eight, but if your message is important--
ALICE. It is; and you are so clever, Matey, I am sure that you can persuade them to oblige you.
MATEY (taking the telegram). I will see to it myself, ma'am; you can depend on its going.
(There comes a little gasp from COADY, which is the equivalent to dropping a stitch in needle-work.)
ALICE (who is THE DEARTH now). Thank you. Better read the telegram, Matey, to be sure that you can make it out. (MATEY reads it to himself, and he has never quite the same faith in woman again. THE DEARTH continues in a purring voice.) Read it aloud, Matey.
MATEY. Oh, ma'am!
ALICE (without the purr). Aloud.
(Thus encouraged he reads the fatal missive.)
MATEY. 'To Police Station, Great Cumney. Send officer first thing to-morrow morning to arrest Matey, butler, for theft of rings.'
ALICE. Yes, that is quite right.
MATEY. Ma'am! (But seeing that she has taken up a book, he turns to LADY CAROLINE.) My lady!
LADY CAROLINE (whose voice strikes colder than THE DEARTH'S). Should we not say how many wings?
ALICE. Yes, put in the number of rings, Matey.
(MATEY does not put in the number, but he produces three rings from unostentatious parts of his person and returns them without noticeable dignity to their various owners.)
MATEY (hopeful that the incident is now closed). May I tear up the telegram, ma'am?
ALICE. Certainly not.
LADY CAROLINE. I always said that this man was the culpwit. I am nevaw mistaken in faces, and I see bwoad awwows all over youws, Matey.
(He might reply that he sees w's all over hers, but it is no moment for repartee.)
MATEY. It is deeply regretted.
ALICE (darkly). I am sure it is.
JOANNA (who has seldom remained silent for so long). We may as well tell him now that it is not our rings we are worrying about. They have just been a means to an end, Matey.
(The stir among the ladies shows that they have arrived at the more interesting point.)
ALICE. Precisely. In other words that telegram is sent unless--
(MATEY'S head rises.)
JOANNA. Unless you can tell us instantly whet peculiarity it is that all we ladies have in common.
MABEL. Not only the ladies; all the guests in this house.
ALICE. We have been here a week, and we find that when Lob invited us he knew us all so little that we begin to wonder why he asked us. And now from words he has let drop we know that we were invited because of something he thinks we have in common.
MABEL. But he won't say what it is.
LADY CAROLINE (drawing back a little from JOANNA). One knows that no people could be more unlike.
JOANNA (thankfully). One does.
MRS. COADE. And we can't sleep at night, Matey, for wondering what this something is.
JOANNA (summing up). But we are sure you know, and it you don't tell us--quod.
MATEY (with growing uneasiness). I don't know what you mean, ladies.
ALICE. Oh yes, you do.
MRS. COADE You must admit that your master is a very strange person.
MATEY (wriggling). He is a little odd, ma'am. That is why every one calls him Lob; not Mr. Lob.
JOANNA. He is so odd that it has got on my nerves that we have been invited here for some sort of horrid experiment. (MATEY shivers.) You look as if you thought so too!
MATEY. Oh no, miss, I--he--(The words he would keep back elude him). You shouldn't have come, ladies; you didn't ought to have come.
(For the moment he is sorrier for them than for himself.)
LADY CAROLINE. (Shouldn't have come). Now, my man, what do you mean by that?
MATEY. Nothing, my lady: I--I just mean, why did you come if you are the kind he thinks?
MABEL. The kind he thinks?
ALICE. What kind does he think? Now we are getting at it.
MATEY (guardedly). I haven't a notion, ma'am.
LADY CAROLINE (whose w's must henceforth be supplied by the judicious reader). Then it is not necessarily our virtue that makes Lob interested in us?
MATEY (thoughtlessly).