The Million-Dollar Suitcase Part 11

"But I wouldn't have believed any human eyes could have found that thing. I discovered it only by sense of touch--and that after you told me to hunt for it. You saw it when I was showing you the latch, did you?"

"Oh, I didn't see it." She shook her head. "I found it when I was sitting up there on the roof."

"Guessed at it?"

"I never guess." Indignantly. "When I'd cleared my mind of everything else--had concentrated on just the facts that bore on what I wanted to know--how that man with the suitcase got out of the room and left it locked behind him--I deduced the hole in the sash by elimination."

"By elimination?" I echoed. "Show me."

"Simple as two and two," she a.s.sented. "Out of the door? No; Mrs.

Griggsby; so out of the window. Down? No; you told why; he would be seen; so, up. Ladder? No; too big for one man to handle or to hide; so a rope."

"But the hole in the sash?"

"You showed me the only way to close that lock from the outside. There was no hole in the gla.s.s, so there must be in the sash. It was not visible--you had been all over it, and a man of your profession isn't a totally untrained observer--so the hole was plugged. I hadn't seen the plug, so it was concealed by paint--"

I was trying to work a toothpick through the plughole. She offered me a wire hairpin, straightened out, and with it I pushed the hasp into place from outside, saw the lever snap in to hold it fast. I had worked the catch as Clayte had worked it--from outside.

"How did you know it was _this_ window?" I asked, forced to agree that she had guessed right as to the sash lock. "There are two more here, either of which--"

"No, please, Mr. Boyne. Look at the angle of the roof that cuts from view any one climbing from this window--not from the others."

We were all leaning in the window now, sticking our heads out, looking down, looking up.

"I can't yet see how you get the rope and hook," I said. "Still seems to me that an outside man posted on the roof to help in the getaway is more likely."

"Maybe. I can't deal with things that are merely likely. It has to be a fact--or nothing--for my use. I know that there wasn't any second man because of the nicks Clayte's grappling hook has left in the cornice up there."

"Nicks!" I said, and stood like a bound boy at a husking, without a word to say for myself. Of course, in this impa.s.se of the locked windows, my men and I had had some excuse for our superficial examination of the roof. Yet that she should have seen what we had pa.s.sed over--seen it out of the corner of her eye, and be laughing at me--was rather a dose to swallow. She'd got her hair and her hat and veil to her liking, and she prompted us,

"So now you want to get right down stairs--don't you--and go up through that other building to its roof?"

I stared. She had my plan almost before I had made it.

At the St. Dunstan desk where I returned the keys, little Miss Wallace had a question of her own to put to the clerk.

"How long ago was this building reroofed?" she asked with one of her dark, softly glowing smiles.

"Reroofed?" repeated the puzzled clerk, much more civil to her than he had been to me. "I don't know that it ever was. Certainly not in my time, and I've been here all of four years."

"Not in four years? You're sure?"

"Sure of that, yes, miss. But I can find exactly." The fellow behind the desk was rising with an eagerness to be of service to her, when she cut him short with,

"Thank you. Four years would be exact enough for my purpose." And she followed a puzzled detective and, if I may guess, an equally wondering Worth Gilbert out into the street.

CHAPTER VII

THE GOLD NUGGET

The neighbor to the south of the St. Dunstan was the Gold Nugget Hotel, a five story brick building and not at all pretentious as a hostelry. I knew the place mildly, and my police training, even better than such acquaintance as I had with this particular dump, told me what it was.

Through the windows we could see guests, Sunday papers littered about them, half smoked cigars in their faces, and hats which had a general tendency to tilt over the right eye. And here suddenly I realized the difference between Miss Barbara Wallace, a scientist's daughter, and some feminine sleuth we might have had with us.

"Take her back to the St. Dunstan, Worth," I suggested. Then, as I saw they were both going to resist, "She can't go in here. I'll wait for you if you like."

"Don't know why we shouldn't let Bobs in on the fun, same as you and me, Jerry." That was the way Worth put it. I took a side glance at his att.i.tude in this affair--that he'd bought and was enjoying an eight hundred thousand dollar frolic, offering to share it with a friend; and saying no more, I wheeled and swung open the door for them. The man at the desk looked at me, calling a quick,

"h.e.l.lo, Jerry--what's up?"

"h.e.l.lo, Kite. How'd you come here?"

The Kite as a hotelman was a new one on me. Last I knew of him, he was in the business of making book at the Emeryville track; and I supposed--if I ever thought of him--that he'd followed the ponies south across the border. As I stepped close to the counter, he spoke low, his look one of puzzled and somewhat anxious inquiry.

"Running straight, Jerry. You may ask the Chief. What can I do for you?"

Rather glad of the luck that gave me an old acquaintance to deal with, I told him, described Clayte, Worth and Miss Wallace standing by listening; then asked if Kite had seen him pa.s.s through the hotel going out the previous day at some time around one o'clock, carrying a brown, sole leather suitcase.

The readers of the Sunday papers who had been lured from their known standards of good manners into the sending of sundry interested glances in the direction of our sparkling girl, took the cue from the Kite's scowl to bury themselves for good in the voluminous sheets they held, each attending strictly to his own business, as is the etiquette of places like the Gold Nugget.

"About one o'clock, you say?" Kite muttered, frowning, twisted his head around and called down a back pa.s.sage, "Louie--Oh, Louie!" and when an overalled porter, rather messy, shuffled to the desk, put the low toned query, "D'you see any stranger guy gripping a sole leather s.h.i.+rt-box snoop by out yestiddy, after one, thereabouts?" And I added the information,

"Medium height and weight, blue eyes, light brown hair, smooth face."

Louie looked at me dubiously.

"How big a guy?" he asked.

"Five feet seven or eight; weighs about hundred and forty."

"Blue eyes you say?"

"Light blue--gray blue."

"How was he tucked up?"

"Blue serge suit, black shoes, black derby. Neat, quiet dresser."

Louie's eyes wandered over the guests in the office questioningly. I began to feel impatient. If there was any place in the city where my description of Clayte would differentiate him, make him noticeable by comparison, it was here. Neat, quiet dressers were not dotting this lobby.

"Might be Tim Foley?" he appealed to the Kite, who nodded gravely and chewed his short mustache. "Would he have a big scar on his left cheek?"

"He would not," I said shortly. "He wasn't a guest here, and you don't know him. Get this straight now: a stranger, going through here, out; about one o'clock; carried a suitcase."

"Bulls after him?" Louie asked, and I turned away from him wearily.