“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 knockout.”
“What do you mean?” asked his interlocutor.
“Well, I’d have sworn on seven Bibles that I’d put 4 s. on that bill. But now I saw I’d put 14 s. , 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.”