Page:Earl Derr Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913).djvu/171

Rh take his grapefruit at the breakfast-table. Only that morning Mr. Magee, by way of experiment, had fastened upon him the suspicion of murder, and the old man had not flickered an eyelash. Not the least strange of all the strange figures that floated about Baldpate, Mr. Magee reflected, was this man who fiddled now with Chaucer while, metaphorically, Rome burned. He could not make it out

Mr. Max inserted a loud yawn into the profes sor's discourse.

"Once I played chess with a German," he said, "and another time I went to a lecture on purifying politics, but I never struck anything so monoto nous as this job I got now."

"So sorry," replied Magee, "that our company bores you."

"No offense," remarked the yellow-faced one. "I was just thinking as I set here how it all comes of people being suspicious of one another. Now I've always held that the world would be a better place if there wasn't no suspicion in it. Nine times out of ten the suspicion ain't got a leg to stand on—if suspicion can be said to have a leg."