John Wellington Wells’s investigation of the firm’s partners turns a question of complicity into a test of what people mean, not merely what they say. With Dragon-dropping beans in the hands of Paul Carpenter and Sophie Pettingell, he can examine the partners’ responses without relying solely on his own judgment. The inquiry establishes that Dennis Tanner learned Humphrey Wells had imprisoned John, but also uncovers Tanner’s separate role in bringing Paul and Sophie into the firm and setting their story in motion.

The Inquiry and Its Stakes

John begins by explaining that Humphrey may not have acted alone: one of the partners could have participated in the plot or known about it and failed to intervene. John says he has reached this suspicion through his observations while transformed into a stapler and through information gathered since his return. The possibility matters because the question is not only who imprisoned him, but whether the firm’s leadership allowed that injustice to persist.

Rather than question the partners himself with the Dragon-dropping beans, John asks Paul and Sophie to take them. He acknowledges that if he used the beans personally, the partners might suspect he was seeking a pretext to remove someone he disliked. Paul and Sophie, he reasons, have no such personal stake and therefore no apparent reason to distort what they hear. The partners initially sit in silence, then slowly agree to the arrangement. John’s choice makes the inquiry a public test, conducted in front of those whose conduct is under scrutiny.

Testing Words Against Meaning

John first stages a controlled experiment. He writes one statement on a slip of paper and a different thought on another, then says something aloud while concentrating on the other message. He asks the partners a question about the Contessa di Castel’Bianco’s nose; she answers the spoken insult, while Paul and Sophie independently report the insulting thought John had intended them to hear. Their accounts match. The demonstration establishes that the beans disclose a speaker’s meaning rather than simply reproducing the words heard aloud.

The experiment also gives the scene its method of judgment. John does not treat a polished explanation as sufficient, nor does he rely on the partners’ faces or reputations. The difference between audible speech and intended meaning becomes an instrument for testing each response. He then tells them that he has made his point and begins asking them, one by one, about Humphrey’s actions against him.

The Partners’ Responses

John first sets aside Dietrich Wurmtoter because he joined the firm long after John disappeared. He turns to Professor Van Spee, acknowledging their mutual dislike and asking whether he joined the plot. Van Spee says that he had genuinely believed John dead, while admitting that he would have welcomed John’s death for other reasons. John accepts that answer. The distinction between personal hostility and knowledge of the imprisonment is central: animosity alone does not establish complicity.

John next asks the Contessa di Castel’Bianco, invoking her ambition and dubious reputation before asking directly whether she was involved. She denies it, and he proceeds to Casimir Suslowicz. He describes Suslowicz as greedy as well as foolish, then asks whether he knew what Humphrey had done. Suslowicz responds emotionally that he owes everything to John and is grateful for his return. The exchange provides no confession of prior knowledge, and John moves on to Dennis Tanner, whom he says he would not readily trust.

Tanner’s answer changes the investigation. He says that his silence was not personal: he had not known John when the imprisonment began and discovered the truth only years later. By then, he says, freeing John would also have released the clerk who had fathered him, a consequence he was unwilling to bring about. Tanner says he would have rescued John if there had been a way to do so without freeing that man as well. His admission is neither participation in the original plot nor a claim of ignorance throughout; it establishes that he learned of it later and chose not to act.

Tanner’s Role in the Larger Plot

As Tanner continues, the Dragon-dropping beans expose further thoughts that John does not need Paul and Sophie to translate. Tanner complains inwardly about John’s return, his mother’s conduct, and the prospect of losing control of the situation. John understands enough to stop the test and makes clear that the substance of Tanner’s meaning is apparent. The inquiry thus moves beyond the narrow question of who knew about the old imprisonment: it reveals the tension between Tanner’s stated loyalty to the firm and his private resentment of John’s return.

Tanner then assumes that John will remove him from the firm and points out that his family owns the building. John rejects the suggestion that this gives him leverage. Instead, he says Tanner has underestimated him and expresses sympathy for the difficulty of having Tanner’s mother. He also recalls that Tanner insisted on hiring Paul and Sophie when Humphrey had opposed them, sent them the swords in the stones, and staged the encounter that brought them together. John interprets those actions as a deliberate attempt to put the people capable of setting matters right in place; he even calls Tanner a matchmaker.

Tanner answers that arranging the hiring was self-defense: he wanted Humphrey to stay away from his mother. After Sophie asks whether John’s account was true, Tanner confirms that he pressed for both appointments, but offers another explanation as well. He says he recognized that Paul and Sophie were naturally suited to the work, even though the other partners did not see it. He declines to explain what he thought was so obvious, telling them they can work it out for themselves.

Outcome and Significance

John does not expel Tanner. Instead, he asks Paul and Sophie to use their discretion if the firm is to continue working together, and they agree. The immediate outcome is therefore a negotiated continuation rather than a clean purge: Tanner’s later knowledge and inaction have been exposed, but John distinguishes them from Humphrey’s original act and recognizes Tanner’s part in hiring the two people who helped resolve the larger crisis.

The investigation also recasts apparently ordinary office decisions as pieces of a concealed design. Hiring votes, a pair of swords, and a staged meeting acquire new significance when John connects them to Tanner’s efforts to protect himself and, knowingly or not, to bring Paul and Sophie into the right position. Yet Tanner resists being reduced to John’s explanation of his motives. His final claim—that he hired them because they were naturals—leaves the full extent of his foresight unsettled. The scene closes with the central facts established, the firm’s partners still required to work together, and the reason Paul and Sophie were so well suited to the task left for them to discover.