“Now that that is over we can have a very gay little supper.” * * * * * When Peters had pushed back his chair, satisfied as only a trained raconteur can be by the silence of a difficult audience, and had busied himself with a cigar, there was an instant outcry. “I say, Peters, old boy, that is not all!” “Absolutely.” “The story ends there?” “That ends the story.” “But who took the ring?” Peters extended his hands in an empty gesture. “What! It was never found out?” “Never.” “No clue?” “None.” “I don’t like the story,” said De Gollyer. “It’s no story at all,” said Steingall. “Permit me,” said Quinny in a didactic way; “it is a story, and it is complete. In fact, I consider it unique because it has none of the banalities of a solution and leaves the problem even more confused than at the start.” “I don’t see—” began Rankin. “Of course you don’t, my dear man,” said Quinny crushingly. “You do not see that any solution would be commonplace, whereas no solution leaves an extraordinary intellectual problem.” “How so?” “In the first place,” said Quinny, preparing to annex the topic, “whether the situation actually happened or not, which is in itself a mere triviality, Peters has constructed it in a masterly way, the proof of which is that he has made _me_ listen. Observe, each person present might have taken the ring—Flanders, a broker, just come a cropper; Maude Lille, a woman on the ragged side of life in desperate means; either Mr. and Mrs. Cheever, suspected of being card sharps—very good touch that, Peters, when the husband and wife glanced involuntarily at each other at the end—Mr. Enos Jackson, a sharp lawyer, or his wife about to be divorced; even Harris, concerning whom, very cleverly, Peters has said nothing at all to make him quite the most suspicious of all. There are, therefore, seven solutions, all possible and all logical. But beyond this is left a great intellectual problem.” “How so?” “Was it a feminine or a masculine action to restore the ring when threatened with a search, knowing that Mrs. Kildair’s clever expedient of throwing the room into darkness made detection impossible? Was it a woman who lacked the necessary courage to continue, or was it a man who repented his first impulse? Is a man or is a woman the greater natural criminal?” “A woman took it, of course,” said Rankin. “On the contrary, it was a man,” said Steingall, “for the second action was more difficult than the first.” “A man, certainly,” said De Gollyer. “The restoration of the ring was a logical decision.”