Mr. Parker begged his friend's pardon for his unworthy suspicions, and they sat a little time in silence. Parker sipped his port, and saw unimaginable visions warmly glowing in its rosy depths. Wimsey pulled out his pocket-book, and began idly turning over its contents, throwing old letters into the fire, unfolding and refolding memoranda, and reviewing a miscellaneous series of other people's visiting-cards. He came at length to the slip of blotting-paper from the study at Riddlesdale, to whose fragmentary markings he had since given scarcely a thought.
Presently Mr. Parker, finishing his port and recalling his mind with an effort, remembered that he had been meaning to tell Peter something before the name of Lady Mary had driven all other thoughts out of his head. He turned to his host, open-mouthed for speech, but his remark never got beyond a preliminary click like that of a clock about to strike, for, even as he turned, Lord Peter brought his fist down on the little table with a bang that made the decanters ring, and cried out in the loud voice of complete and sudden enlightenment:
"Manon Lescaut!"
"Eh?" said Mr. Parker.
"Boil my brains!" said Lord Peter. "Boil 'em and mash 'em and serve 'em up with butter as a dish of turnips, for it's damn well all they're fit for! Look at me!" (Mr. Parker scarcely needed this exhortation.) "Here we've been worryin' over Jerry, an' worryin' over Mary, an' huntin' for Goyleses an' Grimethorpes and God knows who—and all the time I'd got this little bit of paper tucked away in my pocket. The blot upon the paper's rim a blotted paper was to him, and it was nothing more. But Manon, Manon! Charles, if I'd had the grey matter of a woodlouse that book ought to have told me the whole story. And think what we'd have been saved!"
"I wish you wouldn't be so excited," said Parker. "I'm sure it's perfectly splendid for you to see your way so clearly, but I never read Manon Lescaut, and you haven't shown me the blotting-paper, and I haven't the foggiest idea what you've discovered."
Lord Peter passed the relic over without comment.
"I observe," said Parker, "that the paper is rather crumpled and dirty, and smells powerfully of tobacco and Russian leather, and deduce that you have been keeping it in your pocket-book."
"No!" said Wimsey incredulously. "And when you actually saw me take it out! Holmes, how do you do it?"
"At one corner," pursued Parker, "I see two blots, one rather larger than the other. I think someone must have shaken a pen there. Is there anything sinister about the blot?"