CHAPTER XVI 

AND THE PUPPETS DANCED 

And so he went to meet Louisa and Colonel Harris at the Danish Legation, and found them a taxicab and generally saw to their comparative comfort. 

There was no restraint between the three of them. It was as natural to them all to avoid speaking of important matters on the door step of a neighbour's house, as it was to eat or drink or breathe. So Luke asked if the dinner had been enjoyable and the reception crowded, and Colonel Harris comfortably complained of both. He hated foreign cooking, and society crushes, and had endured both to-night. No doubt the terrible events of this night, as yet mere shadows--hardly admitted to be real--were weighing on the kind old man's usual hearty spirits. 

But so versed were they all in the art of make believe that each one individually was able to register in the innermost depths of an anxious heart the firm conviction that the other "had not heard." 

Luke was convinced that the gruesome and sordid news could not have penetrated within the gorgeous mansion where Lou in an exquisite gown had sung modern songs in her pure contralto voice. He felt sure that neither Lou nor Colonel Harris had heard that Philip de Mountford had been murdered in a taxicab and that police officers had thought fit to speak to him--Luke--in tones of contemptuous familiarity. Nay more! now that he himself sat thus opposite good-natured, prosy, sensible Colonel Harris, he began to think that he must have been dreaming, that the whole thing could not have occurred, but that he had imagined it all whilst leaning against the garden-railings trying to strain his ears so that they should hear the soft faint echo of that pure contralto voice. 
How did the police speak to Luke?
 tones of contemptuous familiarity