Alec looked at the vase. It seemed a very ordinary sort of affair.
“What’s the matter with it? It looks all right to me.”
“Oh, there’s nothing the matter with it,” said Roger airily. “It is all right.”
Alec approached the table and clenched a large fist, which he proceeded to hold two inches in front of Roger’s nose.
“If you don’t tell me within thirty seconds what you’re talking about, I shall smite you,” he said grimly. “Hard!”
“I’ll tell you,” said Roger quickly. “I’m not allowed to be smitten before lunch. Doctor’s orders. He’s very strict about it, indeed. Oh, yes; about that vase. Well, don’t you see? There’s only one of it!”
“Is that all?” asked Alec, turning away disgustedly. “I thought from the fuss you were making that you’d discovered something really exciting.”
“So I have,” returned Roger, unabashed. “You see, the exciting part is that yesterday, I am prepared to swear, there were two of it.”
“Oh? How do you know that?”
“Because now I come to realise it, I remember an impression of well-balanced orderliness about that chimney-piece. It was a typical man’s room chimney-piece. Women are the unsymmetrical sex, you know. The fact of there being only one vase alters its whole appearance.”