“Is that all?” asked Alec, turning away disgustedly. “I thought from the fuss you were making that you’d discovered something really exciting.” “So I have,” returned Roger, unabashed. “You see, the exciting part is that yesterday, I am prepared to swear, there were two of it.” “Oh? How do you know that?” “Because now I come to realise it, I remember an impression of well-balanced orderliness about that chimney-piece. It was a typical man’s room chimney-piece. Women are the unsymmetrical sex, you know. The fact of there being only one vase alters its whole appearance.” “Well?” Alec still did not appear to be very much impressed. “And what’s that got to do with anything?” “Probably nothing. It’s just a fact that since yesterday afternoon the second vase has disappeared; that’s all. It may have been broken somehow by Stanworth himself; one of the servants may have knocked it over; Lady Stanworth may have taken it to put some flowers in—anything! But as it’s the only new fact that seems to emerge, let’s look into it.” Roger left the table and strolled leisurely over to the fireplace. “You’re wasting your time,” Alec growled, unconvinced. “What are you going to do? Ask the servants about it?” “Not yet, at any rate,” Roger replied from the hearthrug. He stood on tip-toe to get a view of the surface of the chimney-piece. “Here you are!” he exclaimed excitedly. “What did I tell you? Look at this! The room hasn’t been dusted this morning, of course. Here’s a ring where the vase stood.” He dragged a chair across and mounted it to obtain a better view. Alec’s inch or two of extra height enabled him to see well enough by standing on the shallow fender. There was very little dust on the chimney-piece, but enough to show a faint though well-defined ring upon the surface. Roger reached across for the other vase and fitted its base over the mark. It coincided exactly. “That proves it,” Roger remarked with some satisfaction. “I knew I was right, of course; but it’s always pleasant to be able to prove it.” He bent forward and examined the surface closely. “I wonder what on earth all these other little marks are, though,” he went on thoughtfully. “I don’t seem able to account for them. What do you make of them?” Dotted about both in the ring and outside it were a number of faint impressions in the shallow dust; some large and broad, others quite small. All were irregular in shape, and their edges merged so imperceptibly into the surrounding dust that it was impossible to say where one began or the other ended. A few inches to the left of the ring, however, the dust had been swept clean away across the whole depth of the surface for a width of nearly a foot. “I don’t know,” Alec confessed. “They don’t convey anything to me, I’m afraid. I should say that somebody’s simply put something down here and taken it away again later. I don’t see that it’s particularly important in any case.”