Keith and Alice glanced at each other blankly; and Thorne, looking clean, rested, and complacent for the first time in weeks, sat up straighter in Ellery’s most comfortable chair.
“I’m glad something occurred to somebody,” said Nick Keith with a grin. “I’m a pauper; and Alice is only one jump ahead of me.”
“You haven’t the philosophic attitude towards wealth,” said Ellery dryly, “that’s so charming a part of Dr. Reinach’s personality. Poor Colossus! I wonder how he likes our jails...” He poked a log into the fire. “By this time, Miss Mayhew, our common friend Thorne has had your father’s house virtually annihilated. No gold. Eh, Thorne?”
“Nothing but dirt,” said the lawyer sadly. “Why, we’ve taken that house apart stone by stone.”
“Exactly. Now there are two possibilities, since I am incorrigibly categorical: either your father’s fortune exists, Miss Mayhew, or it does not. If it does not and he was lying, there’s an end to the business, of course, and you and your precious Keith will have to put your heads together and agree to live either in noble, ruggedly individualistic poverty or by the grace of the Relief Administration. But suppose there was a fortune, as your father claimed, and suppose he did secrete it somewhere in that house. What then?”
“Then,” sighed Alice, “it’s flown away.”
Ellery laughed. “Not quite; I’ve had enough of vanishments for the present, anyway. Let’s tackle the problem differently. Is there anything which was in Sylvester Mayhew’s house before he died which is not there now?”
Thorne stared. “If you mean the— er— the body...”
“Don’t be gruesome, Literal Lyman. Besides, there’s been an exhumation. No, guess again.”
Alice looked slowly down at the package in her lap. “So that’s why you asked me to fetch this with me today!”