“Well, then, keep quiet. A fine detective you are! Why didn’t you think of that? The old tower! Of course he meant the old water tower. What else could he have meant? But you wouldn’t think of it. Not in a hundred years⁠—you wouldn’t think of it. What kind of a detective are you, anyway? Here was a case that was as simple as A.B.C. and you couldn’t think of it. You let yourself be beat by a couple of boys!”

Smuff looked properly ashamed of himself, although it was plain that he was struggling with the temptation to ask the chief why he had not thought of the water tower, too. But he stifled the impulse and thereby doubtless saved the chief the trouble of dismissing him for impudence and insubordination.