“I am not silent, I am silenced,” said Brinkman. “The second best peacock dare not strut for fear of an encounter.”
“I find in silence,” said Bredon, “a mere relief from the burden of conversation. I am grateful to the man who talks, as I should be grateful to the man who jumped in before me to rescue a drowning baby. He obviates the necessity for effort on my part. I sometimes think that is why I married.”
“Miles,” said Angela, “if you are going to be odious, you will have to leave the room. I suppose you think you can be rude because the detectives in fiction are rude? Mr. Leyland may be silent, but at least he’s polite.”
“Mr. Bredon is married,” suggested Pulteney. “The caged bird does not strut. His are golden chains, I hasten to add, but they take the spring out of him none the less. For all that, I have some contempt for the man who does not take his share in shouldering the burden of conversation. He puts nothing into the common pot. Mr. Brinkman, I resign the strutting-ground. Tell us whether you think detectives should be strong, silent men or not.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t read much in that direction, Mr. Pulteney. I should imagine it was an advantage to the detective to be silent, so that he can be in a good position to say ‘I told you so’ when the truth comes out.”
“Oh, but a detective ought to be talking all the time,” protested Angela. “The ones in the books always are. Only what they say is always entirely incomprehensible, both to the other people in the book and to the reader. ‘Let me call your attention once more,’ they say; ‘to the sinister significance of the bend in the toast-rack,’ and there you are, none the wiser. Wouldn’t you like to be a detective, Mr. Pulteney?”
“Why, in a sense I am.” There was a slight pause, with several mental gasps in it, till the old gentleman continued, “That is to say, I am a schoolmaster; and the two functions are nearly akin. Who threw the butter at the ceiling, which boy cribbed from which, where the missing postage-stamp has got to—these are the problems which agitate my inglorious old age. I do not know why headmasters allow boys to collect postage-stamps; they are invariably stolen.”
“Or why anybody wants to collect them?” suggested Angela. “Some of them are quite pretty, of course. But I’ve no patience with all this pedantry about the exact date of issue and the exact shape of the watermark. But I suppose the watermark helps you in your investigations, Mr. Pulteney?”
“I am hardly professional enough for that. I leave that to the philatelist. A philatelist, by the way, means one who loves the absence of taxes. It hardly seems to mark out the stamp-lover from his fellows.”
“The detectives of fiction,” put in Leyland, “are always getting important clues from the watermark of the paper on which some cryptic document is written, That is where they have the luck. If you pick up the next four pieces of paper you see, and hold them up to the light, you will probably find that three of them have no watermark at all.”
“I know,” said Angela. “And I used to be told, when I was small, that every genuine piece of silver had a lion stamped on it. But of course they haven’t really. I should think it’s quite likely the wristwatch you gave me, Miles dear, has no lion on it.” She took it off as she spoke. “Or it must be a teeny-weeny one if there is.”
“I think you’re wrong there, Mrs. Bredon.” It was Brinkman who offered the correction. “If you’ll allow me to have a look at it. … There, up there; it’s a little rubbed away, but it’s a lion all right.”
“I thought there always was a lion,” said Bredon, taking out a silver pencil-case with some presence of mind. “Yes, this has got two, one passant and one cabinet size.”
“Let’s see your watch, Mr. Leyland,” suggested Angela, “or is it electro?”
“It should be silver; yes, there’s the little chap.” Immediately afterward, Angela was rewarded by seeing Pulteney take a silver cigarette-case out of his pocket, and handing it over to her. “It’ll be on the inside of this, I suppose? Oh, no, it’s all gilt stuff; yes, I see, here it is on the outside.” It is to be feared that she added “Damn!” under her breath; the cigarette-case had been empty.
“I seem to be the only poor man present,” said Brinkman; “I am all gunmetal.”
Angela did not trouble to influence the conversation further until the “shape” course was finished. Then, rather desperately, she said, “Do smoke, Mr. Leyland, I know you’re dying to. What is a detective without his shag?” and was rewarded by seeing Brinkman take out the gunmetal case and light up. Mr. Pulteney, after verifying his own cigarettelessness, began slowly to fill a briar.
Brinkman’s cigarette, she had seen, was the last in the case; what if it should be the last of its box or of its packet? “I wish I smoked,” she said. “But if I did I would smoke a pipe; it always looks so comfortable. Besides, you can shut your eyes and go to sleep with a pipe, which must be rather dangerous with a cigarette.”
“You’d lose the taste of the pipe if you did,” objected Brinkman. “It’s an extraordinary thing, how little satisfaction you can get out of smoking in the dark.”
“Is that really true? I’ve always heard that about taste depending on sight, and not being able to distinguish one wine from another with one’s eyes shut. Miles, if I put a handkerchief over your eyes, could you tell your beer from Mr. Brinkman’s cider? Oo, I say, let’s
