Mrs. Gentrie laughed. “I’ve never drawn the line there, Delman. When you rented that room and asked if you could move in as one of the family, I told you there was only one thing that was absolutely forbidden — and that was the privilege of the telephone.”
She turned to Mr. Mason, smiling, and said, “We should have three lines in here. What with three children all making dates and scrambling for the phone every time it rings, I sometimes think I’ll smash it — and I can never get to it in the morning or evening to place my orders at the grocer’s or call up my own friends.”
Rebecca said, “We were talking about the tin, Florence.”
Junior said, “Your clutch is slipping, Aunt Rebecca. How the heck could an empty tin have anything to do...”
“Junior!” Mrs. Gentrie broke in. “No one asked you for your opinion. Come on, Mr. Mason, down this way.”
They all trooped after the lawyer down to the cellar. Mason looked the place over. Mrs. Gentrie pointed out where she had found the tin. Junior showed him the door leading to the garage. Mason tested the paint with his finger. “This what Mr. Gentrie painted last night?” he asked.
“A quick-drying enamel of some sort,” Steele said by way of explanation. “Mr. Gentrie runs a hardware store, you know. This was a sample of a new brand of paint one of the salesmen for a paint company had given him. He wanted him to try it out. He was telling me about it last night.”
“It’s necessary to mix it?”
“Half and half with some thinner,” Steele explained. “Gentrie seemed to think it was a distinct improvement over any other of the brands he’d been handling. It comes in two cans. One of them has the color; and the other is some sort of a quick-drying thinner. You mix the two together, half and half, and apply. It’s supposed to dry within six hours.”
Mason indicated a spot near the garage door. “Someone evidently didn’t know it had been freshly painted. It looks very much as if someone, groping for the doorknob in the dark, got his hands on the paint.”