"And then—-?"
"I'm afraid I can't give you any very clear account of it. Time didn't seem to exist, if you know what I mean. But I know that all of a sudden I was moving furniture about, to break up that beastly picture, a bit on a box top and another bit on a sofa-end and so on. It didn't seem quite decent, somehow, all spread out dead flat like that. But I don't wonder you fellows were puzzled."
"But," said Mackwith presently, as we still stood looking at that moonlike radiance spread across the floor, "why couldn't you tell us all this sooner?"
"What for?" Philip retorted. "It didn't take me long to realize that I'd told you a dashed sight too much as it was! I had to have it out with Monty and Chummy, of course; but the less said after that the better. Suppose it had been a common Murder Case. I saw it, and could have hanged a man straight away with a word. You didn't, so why fill you up with a lot of hearsay? Don't you think I was right?"
"Hush! Listen!"
It was the tinkling of the street door bell. Chummy Smith was back already.
IX
He had a taxi waiting, and the driver was getting the boxes on as we reached the annexe again. Philip carried in his hand the jar of orange curaçao.
"Get the liqueur-glasses out, Monty," he said, and the words sounded remotely familiar.