The Professor stopped short. “You do know? Ah, but to be sure. You were yourself a fellow-boarder at Arcadie. You were perhaps under its roof when that disastrous fire broke out and destroyed the whole of the large sum of money I had so negligently left—”
“Under the door!” shrieked Taber Tring. “Under the door of your room, which happened to be the one next to mine.”
A light began to dawn on the Professor. “Is it possible that you were the neighbour whose unseasonable agitation during the small hours of the night caused me, in the total absence of towels or other available material, to stuff the money in question under the crack of the door in order to continue my intellectual labours undisturbed?”
“That’s me,” said Taber Tring sullenly.
But the Princess, who had been listening to the Professor’s disquisition with a look of lovely bewilderment gradually verging on boredom, here intervened with a sudden flash of attention.
“What sort of noises proceeded from my Taber’s room at that advanced hour of the night?” she inquisitorially demanded of the Professor.
“Oh, shucks,” said her betrothed in a weary tone. “Aren’t they all alike, every one of ’em?” He turned to the Professor. “I daresay I was making a noise. I was about desperate. Stony broke, and didn’t know which way to turn next. I guess you’d have made a noise in my place.”
The Professor felt a stirring of sympathy for the stricken youth. “I’m sorry for you—very sorry,” he said. “If I had known your situation I should have tried to master my impatience, and should probably not have crammed the money under the door; in which case it would not have been destroyed in the fire....”
(“How like the reflexions of a Chinese sage!” the Princess admiringly murmured.)
“Destroyed in the fire? It wasn’t,” said Taber Tring.