And why is Bronson making the overtures?”
“I think he was lying,” Hotchkiss reflected. “Bronson hasn’t reached his figure.”
“It’s a big advance, Mr. Hotchkiss, and I appreciate what you have done more than I can tell you,” I said. “And now, if you can locate any of my property in this fellow’s room, we’ll send him up for larceny, and at least have him where we can get at him. I’m going to Cresson to-morrow, to try to trace him a little from there. But I’ll be back in a couple of days, and we’ll begin to gather in these scattered threads.”
Hotchkiss rubbed his hands together delightedly.
“That’s it,” he said. “That’s what we want to do, Mr. Blakeley. We’ll gather up the threads ourselves; if we let the police in too soon, they’ll tangle it up again. I’m not vindictive by nature; but when a fellow like Sullivan not only commits a murder, but goes to all sorts of trouble to put the burden of guilt on an innocent man - I say hunt him down, sir!”
“You are convinced, of course, that Sullivan did it?”
“Who else?” He looked over his glasses at me with the air of a man whose mental attitude is unassailable. “Well, listen to this,” I said.
Then I told him at length of my encounter with Bronson in the restaurant, of the bargain proposed by Mrs. Conway, and finally of McKnight’s new theory. But, although he was impressed, he was far from convinced.
“It’s a very vivid piece of imagination,” he said drily; “but while it fits the evidence as far as it goes, it doesn’t go far enough. How about the stains in lower seven, the dirk, and the wallet? Haven’t we even got motive in that telegram from Bronson?”
“Yes,” I admitted, “but that bit of chain - ”
“Pooh,” he said shortly. “Perhaps, like yourself, Sullivan wore glasses with a chain. Our not finding them does not prove they did not exist.”
And there I made an error; half confidences are always mistakes. I could not tell of the broken chain in Alison West’s gold purse.
It was one o’clock when Hotchkiss finally left. We had by that time arranged a definite course of action - Hotchkiss to search Sullivan’s rooms and if possible find evidence to have him held for larceny, while I went to Cresson.
Strangely enough, however, when I entered the train the following morning, Hotchkiss was already there. He had bought a new notebook, and was sharpening a fresh pencil.
“I changed my plans, you see,” he said, bustling his newspaper aside for me. “It is no discredit to your intelligence, Mr. Blakeley, but you lack the professional eye, the analytical mind. You legal gentlemen call a spade a spade, although it may be a shovel.”
“‘A primrose by the river’s brim A yellow primrose was to him, And nothing more!’”
I quoted as the train pulled out.
CHAPTER XXIII
A NIGHT AT THE LAURELS
I slept most of the way to Cresson, to the disgust of the little detective. Finally he struck up an acquaintance with a kindly-faced old priest on his way home to his convent school, armed with a roll of dance music and surreptitious bundles that looked like boxes of candy. From scraps of conversation I gleaned that there had been mysterious occurrences at the convent, - ending in the theft of what the reverend father called vaguely, “a quantity of undermuslins.” I dropped asleep at that point, and when I roused a few moments later, the conversation had progressed. Hotchkiss had a diagram on an envelope.
“With this window bolted, and that one inaccessible, and if, as you say, the - er - garments were in a tub here at X, then, as you hold the key to the other door, - I think you said the convent dog did not raise any disturbance? Pardon a personal question, but do you ever walk in your sleep?”
The priest looked bewildered.
“I’ll tell you what to do,” Hotchkiss said cheerfully, leaning forward, “look around a little yourself before you call in the police. Somnambulism is a queer thing. It’s a question whether we are most ourselves sleeping or waking. Ever think of that? Live a saintly life all day, prayers and matins and all that, and the subconscious mind hikes you out of bed at night to steal undermuslins! Subliminal theft, so to speak. Better examine the roof.”
I dozed again. When I wakened Hotchkiss sat alone, and the priest, from a corner, was staring at him dazedly, over his breviary.
It was raining when we reached Cresson, a wind-driven rain that had forced the agent at the newsstand to close himself in, and that beat back from the rails in parallel lines of white spray. As he went up the main street, Hotchkiss was cheerfully oblivious of the weather, of the threatening dusk, of our generally draggled condition. My draggled condition, I should say, for he improved every moment, - his eyes brighter, his ruddy face ruddier, his collar newer and glossier. Sometime, when it does not encircle the little man’s neck, I shall test that collar with a match.
I was growing steadily more depressed: I loathed my errand and its necessity. I had always held that a man who played the spy on a woman was beneath contempt. Then, I admit I was afraid of what I might learn. For a time, however, this promised to be a negligible quantity. The streets of the straggling little mountain town had been clean-washed of humanity by the downpour. Windows and doors were inhospitably shut, and from around an occasional drawn shade came narrow strips of light that merely emphasized our gloom. When Hotchkiss’ umbrella turned inside out, I stopped.
“I don’t know where you are going,” I snarled, “I don’t care. But I’m going to get under cover inside of ten seconds. I’m not amphibious.”
I ducked into the next shelter, which happened to be the yawning entrance to a livery stable, and shook myself, dog fashion. Hotchkiss wiped his collar with his handkerchief. It emerged gleaming and unwilted.
“This will do as well as any place,” he said, raising his voice above the rattle of the rain. “Got to make a beginning.”
