"What reason did he give?" Boggs asked.
"Didn't give any. Just hemmed and hawed, and blushed like a girl."
I was inside the cosy room now, its air etched with wavy lines of tobacco smoke, showing blue in the dim glare of the skylight overhead; had nodded to Boggs, whose face was just visible over the top of Mac's most comfortable chair—Boggs always hides his bulk in this particular chair, having furnished none of his own, a weakness or selfishness which we all recognize and permit—and was adding my snow-covered coat and hat to a collection, facing the blazing logs, and within reach of their genial warmth, when Mac's voice again dominated the hum of questioning raised by the half-circle of toasting shins.
"Collins, of course, never said a word—how could he? The old fellow had been his friend for years; went to school with him. Now, gentlemen, what would you have thought?"
It was easy to see that our host had full possession of the floor. His feet were firmly planted on the half-worn Daghestan, his square, erect back turned to the crackling blaze, his head raised, arms swinging, hands extended, accentuating every point that he made with that peculiar twist of the thumb common to all painters. I dropped quietly into a chair. Better keep still and smoke on with my ear-shutters fastened back and my eyes fixed on the speaker's face. The cue would come my way before Mac had got very far in his story.
Again Mac put the question, this time in a rising voice, demanding an answer.
"What would you have thought?"
"I give it up," said Pitkin. "I knew Peaslee. Life went against him, but that old fellow was as straight as a string. Why, he has been book-keeper for that bank for half a century, more or less; I used to keep an account there; queer-looking chap, all spectacles."
"Collins must have put the jewel in his pocket and had not been able to find it," remarked Ford, discussion now being in order; "like a man losing his railroad ticket and discovering it in his hat-band after he has searched every part of his clothes."
"Old fellow was short in his balance and wanted to make it up," growled Boggs. Boggs did not mean a word of it, but it was his turn and he must hazard an opinion of some kind.