“Into the rubbish can, of course.”
“Oh!” said Sam, and sank back in his chair.
Mrs. Benton’s eyebrows rose a trifle. “Bless me, but you wouldn’t expect me to keep my house cluttered up with all sorts of other people’s odds and ends, would you?”
“No, ma’am,” Sam hastened to assure her. “But—but did it stay in the can?”
Mrs. Benton met question with question. “Why? Was it yours?”
“Oh, no,” said Sam. “It wasn’t mine, but I—I—well, I was sort of—sort of interested in it. Do you know what became of it?”
“That’s just what I don’t know.”
“Oh!” said Sam again.
The lady did not miss the disappointment in his tone.
“Somebody took it out of the can,” she explained. “It wasn’t the garbage collector, for that wasn’t his day to come ’round. But I remember that I disposed of the cap after breakfast, and that, when I carried out some potato peelings an hour or two later, the cap had disappeared. There often are people prowling through the alley, you know—tramps, some of ’em—and it was a pretty good cap, after all, if a body wasn’t over-particular. And you say it wasn’t yours?”