“I don’t know why,” Mason said, “but that’s very evidently what he did. Let’s take a look over here in this box of scraps.”
Rebecca said tartly to Mrs. Gentrie, “I told you it had something to do with what happened over there. You can see what happens when a trained mind starts working on the problem.”
Mrs. Gentrie sighed. “I’m afraid I’d make a poor detective,” she said. “It certainly seemed trivial enough.”
Mason smiled. “I’m afraid I’m like your sister-in-law Mrs. Gentrie. Whenever there’s anything the least bit out of the ordinary, I start making a mystery out of it. After all, you know, it is rather a peculiar place for an empty tin, and I can’t imagine why anyone would seal up an entirely empty tin. There must have been something in it.”
“Well, I shook it and didn’t hear anything. And goodness knows the can was light enough to be empty. It couldn’t have had anything in it. Of course, now that I see everyone making so much of a point of it, it...”
“And unless I’m mistaken,” Mason, who had been leaning over the scrap box, interposed, “this is the top which came off the can.” He reached down into the tangled mass of tin.
“Watch out you don’t cut your hand in there,” Mrs. Gentrie warned sharply.
Junior laughed and said, “Mr. Mason doesn’t need to be a detective to tell you’re the mother of three children, Ma. ‘Don’t do this, and don’t do that.’ ”
Mason straightened up with a piece of tin in his hand, walked over to the can in which the paint brushes were deposited, and held the circular piece of tin over the top so that the little twisted nipple of tin which had been left on the can was placed against the corresponding point on the circular piece.
“That’s it all right,” Steele said.