'Who?'
'The coiners.'
Hale's pipe dropped from his jaw, but he managed to catch it before it
reached the floor. Then he took a gulp from the tumbler.
'That was just a lucky shot,' he said.
'_Parfaitement_,' I replied carelessly.
'Now, own up, Valmont, wasn't it?'
I shrugged my shoulders. A man cannot contradict a guest in his own
house.
'Oh, stow that!' cried Hale impolitely. He is a trifle prone to strong
and even slangy expressions when puzzled. 'Tell me how you guessed
it.'
'It is very simple, _mon ami_. The question on which the American
election was fought is the price of silver, which is so low that it
has ruined Mr. Bryan, and threatens to ruin all the farmers of the west
who possess silver mines on their farms. Silver troubled America, ergo
silver troubles Scotland Yard.
'Very well, the natural inference is that someone has stolen bars of
silver. But such a theft happened three months ago, when the metal
was being unloaded from a German steamer at Southampton, and my dear
friend Spenser Hale ran down the thieves very cleverly as they were
trying to dissolve the marks off the bars with acid. Now crimes do not
run in series, like the numbers in roulette at Monte Carlo.
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