"Then the blaze started in a room two flights above the only fire which was going in the house, and that one a low coal fire in the cook stove. The cook stove and the study-hearth get their drafts from different chimneys. No possible connection there?"
"No," answered the marshal, for McCausland's last inflection had been slightly interrogative.
"The cast-away cigar doesn't fit," continued his companion, telling off the thumb on his chubby left hand. "There was no tobacco allowed in the house. Mungovan, their last coachman, was discharged for smoking on the sly. The professor was eccentric, you know, and this was the stanchest of his dogmas."
"Well?"
"No boys with firecrackers playing around. It's the lull between the 17th of June and the Fourth."
"No."
"No phosphorescent rat-bane on the premises," went on McCausland, telling off finger after finger. "You heard what the domestic said?"
"Yes; she was positive about that."
"Because they were not troubled with mice. Another accidental cause removed. But if rodents were swarming like flies in a meat shop, I don't see what substance more combustible than the pasted bindings of old books they could have found in that library to nibble. The lucifers were all kept in a safe downstairs, excepting a few for the sleeping-rooms."
"That's true, but——"