“I’ve been taking a long ride in the country—on a motorcycle,” answered Ashton-Kirk, crossing his shabbily clothed legs and striking a match. “Any time you feel disinclined to face your meals, Pen, I recommend you heartily to do the same. It is a greater bracer. At this moment I really believe I could do complete justice to even the very best culinary thoughts of our friend, Dr. Mercer.”
Pendleton sat down and regarded his friend with questioning eyes.
“It wasn’t to acquire an appetite that you made up this way. You’ve been working.”
Ashton-Kirk comfortably blew one smoke-ring through another before he answered.
“Will you be surprised to hear that I have been following Miss Edyth Vale on a little voyage to the neighborhood of Cordova?”
“Again!”
“But this time she did not pay a visit to Professor Locke. Today the favored one was Allan Morris.”
“Morris! Then she knows where he is?”
“So it would seem.”
“But she told you the other day that she did not.”
Ashton-Kirk shrugged his shoulders.
“Things happen swiftly and unexpectedly,” said he. “Perhaps she did not know it then.”
“And perhaps she did not know Locke or his whereabouts, either,” said Pendleton, with bitter irony.
“Who knows?” replied Ashton-Kirk, composedly. “At any rate, it was just a supposition that led to my labors of today.”
“I don’t think I understand,” said Pendleton, after a moment.
“Last night,” said the investigator, “you asked me if I had learned anything from Professor Locke. And I replied to the effect that I thought I had. Now,” after a pause, devoted to the grateful smoke, “when one sees a girl circumstanced as Miss Vale assuredly is in this case, paying a secret visit to a man who is rather more than suspected of the murder, what does one suppose?”
“That she is leagued with him, somehow,” replied Pendleton, reluctantly.
“Exactly. But on the other hand, when the same girl, upon sight of us, rushes off and leaves the man to face us without giving him a hint as to who we are, what does one suppose?”
But Pendleton rose gloomily and strode over to the window.
“I don’t know,” said he.
“One supposes,” proceeded Ashton-Kirk, “that she has not much interest in him.” Here Pendleton faced about again. “If she had been leagued with him, as you put it, you may be sure that she would have managed to warn him in some way as to our identity. But that she had not done so, the mute’s manner told me as plainly as words could have done. Seeing this, I began figuring what it meant. If she was not associated with Locke in the crime, why was she there? Immediately came the answer—through Morris. But, when I saw her last, she denied any knowledge of Morris’s whereabouts. Then I reasoned, she had seen him in the interim.”
“That’s it,” cried Pendleton, as he stepped forward and slapped the table with his palm; “that’s it, beyond a doubt! He’s managed to get word to her; she’s seen him; he’s told her all or part of the truth; and once more she’s trying to help him. Why, Kirk, I’ll venture to say,” hot with indignation, “that she was led to visit this little scoundrel Locke, last night, much as she was led to visit Hume’s place on the night of the murder—completely in the dark, and merely with some sort of a vague notion of protecting Morris.”
“Perhaps you are right, but I can’t exactly say. But that she has seen Morris I have made quite sure.”
“How?”
“Last night when I appeared at Locke’s window, I established a reason for calling upon her this morning, also I laid a foundation for what followed. Before the call I made certain preparations for a quick change of front,” with a gesture that called attention to his costume; “in our conversation, I managed to tell her that Morris’s hiding place was discovered. Then I left. As I expected, she at once called her car and set off to warn him; and I followed close behind upon the motorcycle.”
“I see, I see. And did you get sight of him?”
Ashton-Kirk nodded. Then he proceeded to relate the story of the noonday run to the country house which Morris had selected as a hiding place. When he had finished, Pendleton sat frowning blackly.
“Secret signals,” said he. “He fears discovery so much that he has forbidden her approaching the house. A regular code has been arranged, eh? And the gloves were dropped in the road purposely; he slipped his answer into one of them; on her way back she discovers her supposed loss, looks for the gloves, and finds them. It is quite ornate,” with a bitter sneer.
Then he took from the investigator’s hand the card upon which he had copied the message of Allan Morris.
“Tobin Rangnow,” he read. Then looking up he inquired with a wan smile. “More secret writing, eh? Or is it a man’s name?”
“There is a decided Irish flavor to Tobin,” answered Ashton-Kirk. “But Rangnow is unfamiliar to me; and if it is a name at all, it is of Eastern European origin. In that case,” laughing, “it could scarcely be expected to share the honors with Tobin.”
He took the card from Pendleton and looked at it thoughtfully. Then he glanced up in a satisfied sort of way:
“As you suggested, Miss Vale no doubt returned, recovered her gloves and read the message,” said he. “As she had just warned him that his hiding place was discovered, it is only natural to suppose that his answer would have something to do with his future movements.”
“That seems likely enough,” said Pendleton.
“Look here; if we put a comma between the two words,” went on the investigator, taking out a pencil and doing so, “the thing takes on the appearance of a name and address.”
Once more he gave the card to Pendleton; then rising he went to the telephone stand and took up the directory.
