"You will--at the proper time."

"What makes you so certain that Mr. Oakes is wrong?"

"He starts out with an impossible explanation, and rests his whole case
on it. There couldn't have been a snake in that room because it
couldn't have gotten out. The window was too high."

"But surely the evidence of the dead dog?"

Mrs. Pickett looked at him as if he had disappointed her. "I had always
heard _you_ spoken of as a man with common sense, Mr. Snyder."

"I have always tried to use common sense."

"Then why are you trying now to make yourself believe that something
happened which could not possibly have happened just because it fits in
with something which isn't easy to explain?"

"You mean that there is another explanation of the dead dog?" Mr.
Snyder asked.

"Not _another_. What Mr. Oakes takes for granted is not an
explanation. But there is a common sense explanation, and if he had not
been so headstrong and conceited he might have found it."

"You speak as if you had found it," chided Mr. Snyder.

"I have." Mrs. Pickett leaned forward as she spoke, and stared at him