“Furniture? Pat—what do you mean?”
“Why, isn’t this the chance of a life-time? I’ve got a scoop here, backed by that bobby’s evidence, that’s going to be worth a whole houseful of furniture, and a watering-can for the garden as well. What else do you think I’ve been engineering it all for? Thzmx zp! as they say in Jugo-Chzechovina.” He sped after his host, winding his muffler across the lower part of his face as he went. Dora gazed after him with a very different expression on her face from that usually seen by the public.
When the two approached the French windows a moment later, the noise was still in full swing, though now spasmodic and conveying a somewhat dispirited effect; but they had hardly stamped over the threshold and exchanged a few gruff “z’s” and “x’s” before it ceased abruptly.
“Eel ehcoot, ler jongdarm, sxs zz,” grunted the shorter of the two Jugo-Chzechovinians. “Oo eh ler zbodyx? Ahxha! Venneh soor, Zorx! Soor ler mattoh-x, zzz.”
With stealthy movements and sibilant noises they spread a mat beside George and rolled him on to it. Refusing to wait in the wings this time, Cynthia and Dora appeared in the doorway to watch the performance, the latter going so far as to lend a helping hand, tapping about on the parquet flooring with her high heels; for, as she very reasonably pointed out to her fellow-conspirators as they bent over the corpse together: “Il faut absolument xsx avoir une vamp, zzz?”
The inert George was then conveyed on his rug across the floor, over the threshold into the garden (involving a four-inch drop on the small of his back) and across the lawn to the river at the bottom. There Mr. Doyle caused all four of them to jump energetically about, so as to leave the choicest collection of footprints that any sleuth could desire, after which they returned to the house.
From the cupboard in the library all this time had come a silence even more eloquent than the former protestations.
“Anything else to be done?” asked Mr. Doyle, thoughtfully, when they had returned again to the hall. He seemed to have taken charge of affairs for the moment and Dora, observing the gleam in his eye, had no difficulty in understanding why. She gave her fiancé the credit of being an artist; he was, she knew, quite capable of arranging the whole thing purely for art’s sake. But the vision of that elusive furniture was a very powerful aid to art.
She was very ready to encourage him. “Clues!” she said, wrinkling her forehead again. “We must have some more clues. But what?”
“It’s a pity we’ve got to do things in such a hurry,” remarked Guy. “This sort of affair wants properly thinking out. I don’t see how we’re going to arrange a real set of interdependent clues, on the spur of the moment.”