“Do you think we didn’t check up on that point?” Markham spoke with disdain. “Captain Leacock was at his own apartment that night from eight o’clock on.”
“Was he, really?” airily retorted Vance. “A most model young fella!”
Again Markham looked at him sharply.
“I’d like to know what weird theory has been struggling in your brain to-day,” he mused. “Now that I’ve let the lady go temporarily—which is what you obviously wanted me to do—, and have stultified my own better judgment in so doing, why not tell me frankly what you’ve got up your sleeve?”
“ ‘Up my sleeve?’ Such an inelegant metaphor! One would think I was a prestidig’tator, what?”
Whenever Vance answered in this fashion it was a sign that he wished to avoid making a direct reply; and Markham dropped the matter.
“Anyway,” he submitted, “you didn’t have the pleasure of witnessing my humiliation, as you prophesied.”
Vance looked up in simulated surprise.
“Didn’t I, now?” Then he added sorrowfully: “Life is so full of disappointments, y’ know.”