“And this sentence that he hurled at you after the bag?” asked John Silence, smiling that peculiarly sympathetic smile that always melted the prejudices of his patient, “were you unable to follow it exactly?”

“It was so quick and low and vehement,” explained Vezin, in his small voice, “that I missed practically the whole of it. I only caught the few words at the very end, because he spoke them so clearly, and his face was bent down out of the carriage window so near to mine.”

“ ‘ À cause du sommeil et à cause des chats’? ” repeated Dr. Silence, as though half speaking to himself.

“That’s it exactly,” said Vezin; “which, I take it, means something like ‘because of sleep and because of the cats,’ doesn’t it?”

“Certainly, that’s how I should translate it,” the doctor observed shortly, evidently not wishing to interrupt more than necessary.