"
"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.
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