“What was this man like?” he asked. “Can you describe him?”
Spively sat up straight, and when he answered, it was with an enthusiasm that showed he had taken special note of the visitor.
“He was good-looking, not so old—maybe thirty. And he had on a full-dress suit and patent-leather pumps, and a pleated silk shirt——”
“What, what?” demanded Vance, in simulated unbelief, leaning over the back of the davenport. “A silk shirt with evening dress! Most extr’ordin’ry!”
“Oh, a lot of the best dressers are wearing them,” Spively explained, with condescending pride. “It’s all the fashion for dancing.”
“You don’t say—really!” Vance appeared dumbfounded. “I must look into this. . . . And, by the bye, when this Beau Brummel of the silk shirt paused by the front door, did he take his cigarette from a long flat silver case carried in his lower waistcoat pocket?”
The youth looked at Vance in admiring astonishment.
“How did you know?” he exclaimed.
“Simple deduction,” Vance explained, resuming his recumbent posture. “Large metal cigarette-cases carried in the waistcoat pocket somehow go with silk shirts for evening wear.”
Markham, clearly annoyed at the interruption, cut in sharply with a demand for the operator to proceed with his description.