"The story ends there?"

"That ends the story."

"But who took the ring?"

Peters extended his hands in an empty gesture.

"What! It was never found out?"

"Never."

"No clue?"

"None."

"I don't like the story," said De Gollyer.

"It's no story at all," said Steingall.

"Permit me," said Quinny in a didactic way; "it is a story, and it is
complete. In fact, I consider it unique because it has none of the
banalities of a solution and leaves the problem even more confused than
at the start."

"I don't see--" began Rankin.

"Of course you don't, my dear man," said Quinny crushingly. "You do not
see that any solution would be commonplace, whereas no solution leaves
an extraordinary intellectual problem."