THE HOUSE OF THE MAN
195
a single fact is shown to be at variance with it.
"It was the dublicate box!" he exclaimed in his perplexity, when he had got back into his room and carefully reclosed the door. "It iss there! But by all reasoning it iss not there; for it to be there—that iss imbossible. But for it not to be there—that also is imbossible, since with my own hands I haf touched it."
He threw himself down upon the edge of the bed and clutched his head in both hands as though it was in danger of bursting. But after thinking it over, he finally went downstairs to the telephone booth upon the first floor of the boarding house and called Hereford's apartment.
Hereford, he found, was out; so Max merely left a message.
