“How extraordinary. Is the watch going?”
“I don’t know, sir. Griscom took it out of the pitcher, but I don’t know what he did with it.”
“Well, we’ll see about it. If you’ve no more astonishing bits of information, you can run along, Sally.”
The girl left the room, and we looked at one another, half smiling, half appalled.
“It’s all so tawdry,” Keeley Moore said, with an impatient shrug of his shoulders.
“Just what meaning do you attach to the word ‘tawdry’?” asked Hart. “I can’t seem to make it apply at all.”
“Oh, I only mean these foolish clues that some practical joker has arranged are tawdry of intent. I may be obliged to change my mind, but just at present, I can’t think that the person who killed Sampson Tracy is the person who stuck the feather duster behind his head and dropped his watch in the water pitcher. By the way, why did he have a water pitcher, with an elaborate bathroom at hand?”
“Call Griscom, let’s find out a little more about it.”
So the butler came at a summons, and explained that the water pitcher was a pitcher of drinking water that was placed on a table for him every night.
“Mr. Tracy didn’t approve of thermos bottles,” Griscom informed us. “He said they never seemed clean things to him. So he had a pitcher.”