Armand leaned over to Lady Helen. “His manners are rather crass,” he remarked, in a confidential whisper, “but he really means well.” Then he pushed the cigarettes across to Courtney.
“Take a fresh one, old chap; the story may be a bit long.”
VIII
INFERENCE OR FACT
Through the story Courtney sat with half closed eyes, pulling at his gray imperial, the unlighted cigarette between his lips. With the main facts he was already familiar, as was every Embassy in Dornlitz, but much of the small details were new to him; and at the end, for a while, he was silent, fitting the incidents together in his mind.
“Do you care to tell me what the police make of it?” he asked.
“Nothing, as usual,” Armand answered. “Their intelligence doesn’t run beyond a hidden panel, and sounding every wall and floor in the Palace; they scorn any theory but that His Majesty concealed the Book.”
“Which is perfectly absurd,” Dehra added; “why should he conceal it, with the box and the vault at hand?”
“Why don’t you make them take another lead?” Lady Helen asked.
“Because I’m sick of them and their ways.—I’ve sent them away—and away they stay; in another day there wouldn’t have been a wall in the Palace.”
“She told the officer in charge the only way he could ever find the Book was not to search for it,” Armand laughed. “And then gave him a grade in rank to salve the words.”