Nice situation, eh?
"The table is cleared. A waiter removes a dish of fruit and there under
the ledge of the plate where it had been pushed--is the coin. Banal
explanation, eh? Of course. Solutions always should be. At once every
one in profuse apologies! Whereupon the visitor rises and says:
"'Now I can give you the reason for my refusal to be searched. There are
only two known specimens of the coin in existence, and the second
happens to be here in my waistcoat pocket.'"
"Of course," said Quinny with a shrug of his shoulders, "the story is
well invented, but the turn to it is very nice--very nice indeed."
"I did know the story," said Steingall, to be disagreeable; "the ending,
though, is too obvious to be invented. The visitor should have had on
him not another coin, but something absolutely different, something
destructive, say, of a woman's reputation, and a great tragedy should
have been threatened by the casual misplacing of the coin."
"I have heard the same story told in a dozen different ways," said
Rankin.
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