“Don’t be funny, now, you rascal,” growled Queen. “Here’s what I make of it. All in all, we are dealing with eight seats—one in which Field sat, for which we have the stub found on Field’s person; one in which the murderer sat, for which we have the stub found by Flint; and finally the six empty seats for which tickets were bought, as established by the box-office report, and for which stubs were not found, torn or whole, anywhere in the theatre or box-office. First of all, it is barely possible that all of those six whole tickets were in the theatre Monday night, and went out of the theatre on somebody’s person. Remember, the search of individuals was necessarily not so exhaustive as to include an examination for small things like tickets. This, however, is highly improbable. The best explanation is that either Field or his murderer bought all eight tickets at one time, intending to use two and reserving the other six to insure absolute privacy during the short time that the business was to be transacted. In this case, the most sensible thing to have done was to destroy the tickets as soon as they were bought; which was probably done by either Field or the murderer, according to who made the arrangements. We must, therefore, forget those six tickets—they’re gone and we’ll never get our hands on them. “To proceed,” continued the Inspector. “We know that Field and his victim entered the theatre separately. This may positively be deduced from the fact that when I put the two stubs back to front, the torn edges did not match. When two people enter together, the tickets are presented together and are invariably torn together. Now—this does not say that they did not come in at practically the same time, because for purposes of safety they may have come in one after the other, as if they did not know each other. However, Madge O’Connell claims no one sat in LL30 during Act I, and the orangeade-boy, Jess Lynch, testified that ten minutes after Act II had started, there was still no one in LL30. This means that the murderer either had not yet entered the theatre, _or_ he had come in before but was sitting in some other part of the orchestra, having a ticket necessarily for another seat.” Ellery shook his head. “I realize that as well as you, son,” said the old man testily. “I’m just following the thought through. I was going to say that it doesn’t seem likely the murderer had come into the theatre at the regular time. It’s probable that he entered at least ten minutes after the second act started.” “I can give you a proof of that,” said Ellery lazily. The Inspector took a pinch of snuff. “I know—those cabalistic figures on the program. How did they read? 930 815 50,000