He was nearly an hour thus engaged, but brought back to the
drawing-room, in addition to the heavy magnifying glass which he had
requisitioned to eke out his eyesight, only a face of disappointment.
"Nothing," he retorted to Eve. "Evidently a gentleman of rigidly formal
habits, our friend of last night--wouldn't dream of calling at any hour
without his gloves on.... I've been over every inch of the safe,
outside and in, and the frame of the screen too, but--nothing. However,
I've been thinking a bit as well, I hope to some purpose."
The woman nodded intently as he drew up his chair and sat down.
"You have made a plan," she stated rather than enquired.
"I won't call it that, not yet. We've got too little to go on. But one
or two things seem fairly obvious, therefore must not be left out of
consideration. Assuming for the sake of argument that Mr. Whitaker Monk
and his lot had a hand in this--"
"Ah! you think that?"
"I admit I'm unfair. But first they quarrel with my sense of the normal
by being too confoundedly picturesque, too rich and brilliant, too
sharp and smart and glib, too--well!--theatrical; like characters from
the cast of what your American theatre calls a crook melodrama.
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