Page:Christopher Morley--Tales from a rolltop desk.djvu/97

little dottle of tobacco such as falls from a half-smoked pipe when it is knocked out. That seemed to me to make a perfect couplet with Mrs. Barlow's tale of the tapping she had heard. She heard it several times, you remember, in a short space of time. That suggests to me someone standing on the street, or walking up and down, in a state of nervousness, because he didn't smoke any of his pipes through. When they were only half smoked he knocked them out, in sheer impatience. Was he waiting for someone?"

"Perhaps it was Digby himself?" I suggested.

"I don't think so," he said. "Because, in the first place, nervousness was the last thing I would associate with his temperament, which was calm and collected in the extreme. And also, he always smoked Brown Eyed Blend, and had done so for years. That was the first thing that struck me as unusual the night we were there—that tin of Cartesian on the table. He was a man of fixed habits; why should he have made a change just that night? I picked up the little wad of tobacco I found lying on the step, and took it carefully home. It's Cartesian, or I'm a Dutchman. So item 1 in our criminal rhyme-scheme is: Find me a nervous man smoking Cartesian."

"It's a bit fanciful," I objected.