advanced on Vail with swinging fists. “Well, we have! You’ve had us cleaned out! You run a robber’s roost here, you dirty thief!”

Furious past further articulate words, Joshua Q. shook a hamlike fist in Thaxton’s astonished face. Vail stepped in under the flailing arm. Then he proceeded, quietly and scientifically, to knock the giant down.

After which, everything happened at once.

[90]

Chapter VI THE POLICE AND THE DUKE OF ARGYLE

Chapter VI

TEN minutes later they trailed downstairs from a mournful inspection of the violet room. There could be no doubt as to the truth of what Joshua Q. Mosely had told them. The smallest of the traveling bags heaped in a corner of the room had been broken open. So had the flimsy lock of the chased silver jewel box it contained.

The thief, apparently, had made brief examination of the various bags in the jumbled heap until he had come upon the only one that was locked. Then with a sharp knife or razor he had slit the russet leather along the hinge, had thrust his hand in and had drawn forth the silver box. It had been absurdly simple to force the lock of this. Probably it had yielded to the first heave of the knifeblade in the crack under the lid.

The window screens had not been disturbed, nor were the vines outside broken or disarranged.[91] Mosely declared he had left locked the room door when he came down to dinner; and had pocketed the key. Clive Creede’s comment on this information was to go to the door of the next room, extract its key and fit it in the door of the violet room. It turned the wards with entire ease.

[91]

“Most of the doors in private houses,” said Clive, by way of explanation, “have standard uniform locks. Any one who wanted to get in here could have borrowed the key of any door along the hallway. You say you found the door wide open when you came back?”

“Yep,” said Mosely, unconsciously nursing his fast-swelling jawpoint. “That’s what made us suspicious. So we switched on the light. And there was this bag, on top of the rest, all bust open. So we—”

He refrained from repeating, for the ninth time, his entire windy recital and mutteringly followed the others down to the living room.

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