This raised Hudson’s mentality in my opinion, and I could see it also scored with Norah.
“That’s true,” she generously agreed. “In books, as soon as I come to the dropped handkerchief or broken cuff-link, I know that isn’t the property of the criminal. But, all the same, people do leave clews,—why, Sherlock Holmes says a person can’t enter and leave a room without his presence there being discoverable.”
“Poppycock,” said Hudson, briefly, and resumed his cogitation.
He was sitting at ease in Mr. Gately’s desk-chair, but I could see the man was thinking deeply, and as he had material for thought that he wasn’t willing to share with us, I returned to my own searching.
“Here’s something the lady left!” I exclaimed, as on a silver ash-tray I saw a cigarette stub, whose partly burned gold monogram betokened it had served a woman’s use.
“Hey, let that alone!” warned Hudson. “And don’t be too previous; sometimes men have gilt-lettered cigs, don’t they?”
Without reply, I scrutinized the monogram. But only a bit remained unburnt, and I couldn’t make out the letters.
Norah was digging in the waste basket, and, the scamp! when Hudson’s head was turned, she surreptitiously fished out something which she hid in her hand, and later transferred to her pocket.
“Nothing doing!” scoffed Hudson, as he turned and saw her occupation, “we been all through that, and anything incriminating has been weeded out. They wasn’t much,—some envelopes and letters, but nothing of any account. Oh, well, straws show which way the wind blows, and we’ve got some several straws!”
“Is this one?” and Norah pointed to the carriage check, which still lay on the desk.
“Nope. Me and the Chief, we decided that didn’t mean nothing at all. It’s old, you can see, from its grimy look, so it wasn’t left here yesterday. Those things are always clean and fresh when they’re given out, and that’s sorta soiled with age, you see.”
“Well!” I exclaimed, “why would a carriage check be soiled with age? They’re used the same day they’re given out. Why is it here, anyway?”
Hudson looked interested. “That’s so, Mr. Brice,” he admitted. “I take it that there check was given to Mr. Gately at some hotel, say. Well, he didn’t use it for some reason or other, and brought it home in his pocket. But as you say, why is it here? Why did he keep it? And, what did he do with it to give it that thumbed, used look?”
We all examined the check. A bit of white cardboard, about two by four inches in size, and pierced with seven circular holes in irregular order. Across the top was printed “Don’t fold this card,” and at one end was the number 743 in large red letters. Also, the right-hand upper corner was sliced off.
“Why,” I exclaimed, “here’s a narrow strip of paper pasted across the end, and—look,—it’s almost transparent! I can read through it—‘Hotel St. Charles!’ That’s where it came from!”
“Hold your horses!” and Hudson smiled condescendingly, “that’s where it didn’t come from! It came from any hotel except the St. Charles. You may not know it, but often a hotel will use electric call-checks of other hotels, with a slip of paper pasted over the name. That’s an item for you to remember. No, Mr. Brice, I can’t attach any importance to that check, but I’m free to confess I don’t see why it’s there. Unless Mr. Gately found it in his pocket after it had been there unnoticed for some time. And yet, it is very much thumbed, isn’t it? That’s queer. Maybe he used it for a bookmark, or something like that.”
“Maybe the lady left it here,” suggested Norah. “The same time she left her hatpin.”
“Now, maybe she did,” and Foxy Jim Hudson smiled benignly at her. “Any ways, you’ve made the thing seem curious, and I guess I’ll keep it for a while.”
He put the card away in his pocketbook, and Norah and I grinned at each other in satisfaction that we had given him a clew to ponder over.
“You know, Mr. Brice,” Hudson remarked, after another period of silent thought, “you missed it, when you didn’t fly in here quicker and catch the murderer redhanded.”
“If I’d known that the first door, Jenny’s door, was the only one I could open, of course I should have gone there first. But I’d never been in here at all,—I’ve only been in the building a week or so, and I did lose valuable time running from one door to another. But I still think it’s queer that I didn’t see anything of the man Jenny describes.”
“One reason is, there wasn’t any such man,” and Hudson seemed to enjoy my blank look.
“What became of the murderer, then?”
“Went down in the car with Mr. Gately. Private elevator. Shot him on the way down——”
“But man, I heard the shot,—and this room was full of smoke.”
“Shot him twice, then. Say the first time, Mr. Gately wasn’t killed and could get into the elevator. Then murderer jumps in, too, and finishes the job on the way down. It’s a long trip to the ground floor, you know. Then, murderer leaves elevator, slams door shut, and walks off.”
I ruminated on this. It seemed absurd on the face of it, and yet——
“Why, then, did Jenny say she saw a man?” demanded Norah.
“Maybe she thought she did,—you know people think they see what they think they ought to see. Jenny heard a shot, and running in, she expected to see a man with a pistol,—therefore, she thought she did see him. Or, again, the girl is quite capable of making up a yarn out of the solid. For the dramatic effect, you know, and to put her silly little self in the limelight.”
This was not unbelievable. Jenny was most unreliable as a witness. She stumbled and contradicted herself as to the man’s hat and had given conflicting testimony about his overcoat.
“Well, as I say, Mr. Brice, the chance was yours to be on the spot but you missed it. Of course, you are not to blame,—but it’s a pity. Now, s’pose you tell me again, as near as you can rec’lect, about that other shadow,—the one that wasn’t Mr. Gately.”
I tried hard to add to my previously related details, but found it impossible to do so.
“Well, could it have been a woman?”
“At first I should have said no, Mr. Hudson. But on thinking it over, I suppose I may say it could have been but I do not think it was.”
“You know nowadays the women folks wear their hair plastered so close to their heads that their heads wouldn’t shadow up any bigger’n a man’s.”
“That’s so,” cried Norah. “A woman’s head is smaller than a man’s, but her hair makes it appear larger in a shadow. Unless, as Mr. Hudson says, she wore it wrapped round her head,—and didn’t have much, anyway.”
“You go outside, Mr. Brice,” directed Hudson, “and look at the shadows of me and Miss MacCormack, and then come back and tell us what you can notice.”
I did this, and the two heads were shadowed forth on the same door that I had watched the day before. But the brighter daylight made the shadows even more vague than yesterday, and I returned without much information.
“I could tell which was which, of course,” I reported, “but it’s true that if I hadn’t known you people at all, I could have mistaken Norah’s head for a man, and I might have believed, Hudson, that you were a woman. It’s surprising how little individuality was shown in the shadows.”