He preceded them into the living room. Briefly, at his request, Vail told of the collie’s amazing behavior and of the finding of Chase.
“You say you hadn’t gone to bed?” asked Quimby, when the short recital was ended. “Why not?”
“It is my own house. It had been robbed. I felt responsible. It seemed safer for some one to stay on guard.”
“In case the thief or thieves should return?” inquired the chief. “If you had any practical experience in such matters, you would know a house which has just been robbed is safer than any other. Thieves don’t rob the same house a second time the same night. Police annals show that a house in which a crime has just been committed is immune from an immediate second crime.”
“If robbery and murder may both be classified as crimes and not as mere outbursts of playfulness,” said Miss Gregg, “that theory has been proven with beautiful definiteness here to-night. So the second crime was probably imaginary or only—”
“I was talking of thefts,” said Quimby, glowering sulkily at her.
Then stirred to professional sternness by the hint of ridicule, he turned majestically once more to Vail.
“You were sitting up?” he prompted. “You were guarding your house—or trying to—from a second series of thefts? Is that it?”
Thaxton nodded.
“You are sure you didn’t go to sleep all night?”