Vance raised his eyebrows in simulated astonishment.
“Do they, now, really?—Fancy that! . . . Still, don’t y’ know, if one were inside the closet, one couldn’t reach the outside knob.”
“The people I know don’t shut themselves in clothes-closets.” Dubois’s tone was ponderously sarcastic.
“You positively amaze me!” declared Vance. “All the people I know are addicted to the habit—a sort of daily pastime, don’t y’ know.”
Markham, always diplomatic, intervened.
“What idea have you about that closet, Vance?”
“Alas! I wish I had one,” was the dolorous answer. “It’s because I can’t, for the life of me, make sense of its neat and orderly appearance that I’m so interested in it. Really, y’ know, it should have been artistically looted.”
Heath was not entirely free from the same vague misgivings that were disturbing Vance, for he turned to Dubois and said:
“You might go over the knob, Captain. As this gentleman says, there’s something funny about the condition of that closet.”
Dubois, silent and surly, went to the closet door and sprayed his yellow powder over the inside knob. When he had blown the loose particles away, he bent over it with his magnifying-glass. At length he straightened up, and gave Vance a look of ill-natured appraisal.