"Oh!" murmured Vance, with a faintly deprecating smile. "It was not the lady, then, but her gloves and bag which were present,—a minute and unimportant distinction, no doubt, from the legal point of view. . . . Still," he added, "I deplore the inability of my layman's untutored mind to accept the two conditions as identical. My trousers are at the dry-cleaners; therefore, I am at the dry-cleaners, what?"
Markham turned on him with considerable warmth.
"Does it mean nothing in the way of evidence, even to your layman's mind, that a woman's intimate and necessary articles, which she has carried throughout the evening, are found in her escort's quarters the following morning?"
"In admitting that it does not," Vance acknowledged quietly, "I no doubt expose a legal perception lamentably inefficient."
"But since the lady certainly wouldn't have carried these particular objects during the afternoon, and since she couldn't have called at the house that evening during Benson's absence without the housekeeper knowing it, how, may one ask, did these articles happen to be there the next morning if she herself did not take them there late that night?"
"'Pon my word, I haven't the slightest notion," Vance rejoined. "The lady herself could doubtless appease your curiosity. But there are any number of possible explanations, y' know. Our departed Chesterfield might have brought them home in his coat pocket,—women are eternally handing men all manner of gewgaws and bundles to carry for 'em, with the cooing request: 'Can you put this in your
