g, black smash, like a star in the ice.

"Our cue at last," cried Valentin, waving his stick; "the place with the
broken window."

"What window? What cue?" asked his principal assistant. "Why, what proof
is there that this has anything to do with them?"

Valentin almost broke his bamboo stick with rage.

"Proof!" he cried. "Good God! the man is looking for proof! Why, of
course, the chances are twenty to one that it has nothing to do with
them. But what else can we do? Don't you see we must either follow one
wild possibility or else go home to bed?" He banged his way into the
restaurant, followed by his companions, and they were soon seated at a
late luncheon at a little table, and looked at the star of smashed glass
from the inside. Not that it was very informative to them even then.

"Got your window broken, I see," said Valentin to the waiter as he paid
the bill.

"Yes, sir," answered the attendant, bending busily over the change, to
which Valentin silently added an enormous tip. The waiter straightened
himself with mild but unmistakable animation.

"Ah, yes, sir," he said. "Very odd thing, that, sir."

"Indeed?" Tell us about it," said the detective with careless curiosity.

"Well, two gents in black came in," said the waiter; "two of those
foreign parsons that are running about. They had a cheap and quiet
little lunch, and one of them paid for it and went out. The other was
just going out to join him when I looked at my change again and found
he'd paid me more than three times too much. 'Here,' I says to the chap
who was nearly out of the door, 'you've paid too much.' 'Oh,' he says,
very cool, 'have we?' 'Yes,' I says, and picks up the bill to show him.
Well, that was a knock-out."

"What do you mean?" asked his interlocutor.

"Well, I'd have sworn on seven Bibles that I'd put 4s. on that bill. But
now I saw I'd put 14s., as plain as paint."

"Well?" cried Valentin, moving slowly, but with burning eyes, "and
then?"

"The parson at the door he says all serene, 'Sorry to confuse your
accounts, but it'll pay for the window.' 'What window?' I says. 'The
one I'm going to break,' he says, and smashed that blessed pane with his
umbrella."

All three inquirers made an exclamation; and the inspector said under
his breath, "Are we after escaped lunatics?" The waiter went on with
some relish for the ridiculous story:

"I was so knocked silly for a second, I couldn't do anything. The man
marched out of the p