But meanwhile—as they say in the movies—
The whole family appeared to be present and correct as I came down to the drawing-room a couple of nights later. The Prof, Mrs. Prof, the two Exhibits, and the girl Heloise were scattered about at intervals. The cat slept on the rug, the canary in its cage. There was nothing, in short, to indicate that this was not just one of our ordinary evenings.
“Well, well, well!” I said, cheerily. “Hullo-ullo-ullo!”
I always like to make something in the nature of an entrance speech, it seeming to me to lend a chummy tone to the proceedings.
The girl Heloise looked at me reproachfully.
“Where have you been all day?” she asked.
“I went to my room after lunch.”
“You weren’t there at five.”
“No. After putting in a spell of work on the good old colleges, I went for a stroll. Fellow must have exercise if he means to keep fit.”
“ Mens sana in corpore sano ,” observed the prof.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” I said cordially.
At this point, when everything was going as sweet as a nut and I was feeling on top of my form, Mrs. Pringle suddenly soaked me on the base of the skull with a sandbag.
Not actually, I don’t mean. No, no. I speak figuratively, as it were.