“Is that so? I thought he told me once that he smoked this. But of course he never did smoke very much.”
“That’s right, sir. About an ounce a week, that’s all.”
“Used to come in here for his ounce every week, did he?”
“Oh, no; he didn’t do that. He used to buy it a quarter-of-a-pound at a time; but that works at an ounce a week, you see.”
“So it does,” observed Roger with an air of mild surprise, and took his departure.
“So now, Anthony,” he confided to that young man outside, “we know what Samuel smoked, how he treated his pipes, how much tobacco he bought at a time and everything else; in fact, about the only thing we appear not to know in this connection is the name of Samuel’s tobacconist’s cousin’s great-aunt’s cat.”
“And what the deuce,” wondered Anthony, “do you imagine you’re going to get out of it all?”
“That Heaven alone knows!” replied Roger, with pious agnosticism.
They went back to the inn for lunch.