PART TWO
Synopsis of Previous Chapter. Having observed that Match-boxes, placed in every room of the house, invariably disappear in a few hours, the narrator resolves to solve the mystery even though the trail should lead straight to the White House in Washington. Accordingly he makes a plan of all the rooms, closets, etc., and searches every possible hiding-place, but no trace of the Match-boxes is found.
What can have become of them! I have searched every corner of every room in the house—Stay! There is one room I have overlooked—the Haunted Room in the West Corridor, haunted by the ghosts of dead cigarettes, unfinished poems and murdered ideas. It is my study (or studio, as the occasion may be). With trembling hand on the porcelain door-knob, I pause to recall the secret combination.
In vain I rack my brain to remember the secret combination of my study door. Then suddenly it flashes upon me that long ago I wrote it down in the address book I carried in my pocket.
There are twelve pockets in the suit I am wearing. Fearfully I go through the twelve pockets and many are the lost treasures and forgotten-to-mail letters I find, but no Address Book! Wait! there is still another pocket! One I never use—THE THIRTEENTH POCKET!
With the deliberation of despair I empty the Thirteenth Pocket of its contents—a broken cigarette, two amalgamated postage stamps, a device for cleaning pipe bowls, some box-checks for The Famous Mrs. Fair, four rubber bands, a fragment of an Erie time-table and—the Address Book!
On the last page of the Address Book is the Combination, written in a pale Greek cipher, but still legible, grasping the porcelain door-knob firmly between my thumb and four fingers I scan the cipher eagerly. De-coded, it reads as follows—Twist knob to the right as far as possible and push door.
. . . .
With heart beating like a typewriter I obeyed the directions to the letter, and to my intense relief the door yielded and in another moment I was in the room!
And there, scattered over the surface of my desk like surprised conspirators, feigning ignorance of one another’s presence, were twelve yellow Match-boxes!
How they mastered the combination of the door and got into the room, I shall not attempt to explain. I am only an amateur Detective.
All I know is that Match-boxes, though they be scattered to the ends of the house (or World), always get together in some one place.
Perhaps it is for safety, they get together.
I have always wondered why they are called Safety Matches.
Perhaps that is the reason!
