For political reasons
nothing got into the papers at the time, but now there is no further need
of secrecy.
You would have been astonished, I fancy, had you chanced upon us in the
empty room at Chelsea on a certain Friday afternoon. No trio of sane
persons could have looked more futile. On a paper pad the professor was
making odd diagrams which might have represented a cubist's idea of an
aeroplane collision; Zena was looking at her hands as if she had
discovered something new and unfamiliar about them; and I was turning the
leaves of my pocket book, hoping to get an inspiration.
"The man-servant," said Zena, breaking the silence, which had lasted a
long time.
"You have said that a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours," Quarles
returned rather shortly, adding after a moment's pause, as if he were
giving us valuable information, "and to-day is Friday."
"It is simply impossible that the servant should know so little," she
persisted. "His ignorance is too colossal to be genuine. He doesn't know
whether he was attacked by one person or by half-a-dozen; he is not sure
that it wasn't a woman who seized him; he has no idea what his master
kept in the safe or in the cupboard.
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