“How long were you gone?” asked Jamison, fishing in his baggy pockets for tobacco and paper to roll another cigarette.
“I don’t know,” said Craig despairingly. “I finished my dinner, wrote a note, and went out to the street. I asked the way to the nearest mail box and dropped my letter in. Then I came back, came up to my room, and the bonds were gone! I’m ruined! I’ll be suspected of stealing them myself!”
Jamison yawned and rolled a cigarette with one hand, watching his own fingers with the absorbed attention of one who has but recently acquired the feat.
“Well,” he said in a moment, after licking the paper. “I guess we’ve got a job ahead of us. What train did you come in on?”
“I got in about four-thirty.”
“That’s number twenty-seven,” commented Jamison. “You came to the hotel right away?”
“Yes. I registered, washed up, had my dinner, and—”
“Bonds negotiable?” queried Jamison uninterestedly. “What issue and numbers?”
Craig told him.
“N. O. and W. 4½S,” Jamison yawned again. “Twenty-nine four eighty-seven to twenty-nine five twenty-two. All right.”
Craig rose as Jamison stood up negligently. Craig looked like a wreck. His face was a sickly white and his eyes burned from cavernous depths. His lips were trembling a little.
“They’re going to suspect me!” he said desperately. “Only one man beside myself knew I had those bonds. They’re gone — stolen. Man, you’ve got to clear me! Search me, search the room! Put me under arrest. Do something!”
“I’ll put you under surveillance,” said Jamison, “if you like.” He yawned. “Just to prove to your firm you didn’t hide out on ’em. I’ll send a man up in a little while.”
“I can give an account of every movement since I’ve been in the city,” said Craig suddenly. “Look here. I keep an account of all my expenditures. You can check me up. Here’s my dinner. Here’s the tip, and a postage-stamp on the letter to my firm. Here’s a magazine I bought... You can check up the time on every one of them. You can trace my movements that way.”
Jamison glanced uninterestedly at the open page held in Craig’s shaking hand.
“Don’t get so excited,” he said grouchily. “Don’t y5 know that if you had swiped the stuff you’d have faked a book like that?”
He eyed the page for a moment and sat down again, as if a new chain of questioning had occurred to him.
“Say, do you often come through here?” he inquired.
“Yes, on an average of once a month.”
“Stop at this hotel?”
“Yes...” Craig began to look hopeful. “Do you suppose some one of the help—”
“How big a package were the bonds?”
“There were eighty of them. They’d make quite a wad of paper.”
“Make a man’s pocket bulge out?”
“Surely.”
“The hotel-clerk kept all the employees waiting,” observed Jamison. “I’ll take a look. Was your place much messed up when you got back?”
“Practically like this. I left the bonds in my suit-case. When I opened the door I saw the place was torn upside down, everything thrown all about.”
“You’d left your suit-case open?” queried Jamison. “They’d look in there first...”
“The bonds were under a shirt — in the folds of a shirt. At first glance they wouldn’t seem to be there.”
Jamison puffed thoughtfully for a moment.
“Ever use your firm’s stationery here?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Just thinking,” said Jamison. “You see, if you dropped a letter-head in a waste-basket, whoever cleaned up the room might connect you up... Say, your firm is a bank. You come through every so often. Suppose you leave a letter-head. Banks sometimes send currency from one place to another by messenger. A chambermaid or bell-hop might notice...”
Craig’s face brightened. Jamison wore an air of innocent pride.
“You have to think of those things,” he said modestly. “I’ll tell you. You go down and get the desk-clerk and a cop. Tell the desk-clerk to have the darkies that clean up this floor come in, one by one. Come back with the clerk and the cop.”
Craig obediently started for the door, hesitated, glanced back, and then went out. Jamison allowed himself the luxury of a grunt when the door closed, and the expression of innocent pride vanished utterly from his features, leaving them somewhat bored and entirely disgusted.
“Sloppy work,” he commented gloomily, to himself. “I wonder where he keep his shaving-soap. That’s the answer, ten to one.”
He began to rummage in Craig’s suitcase.
III
When Craig pushed open the door again with the room-clerk and the policeman, Jamison was standing by the bureau, where there was a light. He seemed to be examining something in his hand. Craig looked vastly more hopeful, though his face was still a deadly white and his eyes were still sunken deeply into his head.
“This officer,” he announced, “saw me when I went out to mail that letter. Tell him about it, Officer.”
“I saw him mail a letter, sorr,” said the policeman. “I was standin’ by the mail-box whin he come up. He axed me for a light, sorr, and lighted his cigar with it. It had gone out. Thin he put his letter in the box. ’Twas a small letter, sorr, in one av th’ hotel envelopes.”
Jamison nodded uninterestedly.
“Oh, all right,” he said wearily. “Nobody thought he mailed ’em away and then called for the police to find ’em. Say.” He turned to the hotel-clerk. “When did you open up this part of the hotel?”
“About six months ago.”
“New help?” queried Jamison. He sank into a chair and yawned.
“Partly,” said the clerk. “The chambermaid’s been here a long time. The cleaner for this floor is Sam Whitehouse. You know him, I think. He’s a pretty good negro. Been fined a couple of times for shooting crap, but that’s all.”
Jamison sat up.
“Sam Whitehouse!” he said with more energy than he had displayed before. “Why didn’t you say so before? Look here.”
He took an envelope from his pocket and scribbled a few words on the back, then handed it to the officer.
“You can attend to it better than anyone else,” he commented. “See to it, won’t you? I’ll wait here.”
He lay back in his chair and frowned at the clerk.
“I wish you hotel people wouldn’t hire known criminals,” he complained. “They’re always making trouble. If there’s a smart darky in the city, it’s that same Sam. He’d steal the brass plate off a coffin — and get away with it. I guess we’ll have him now, though...
He rolled a cigarette and puffed gloomily on it until the policeman returned.
“Got him, sorr. An’ he had the bonds. A thick wad av thim, sorr.”
Craig sprang to his feet.
“What!”
“He’s got the bonds,” said Jamison wearily. “You see, I guessed right when I said you’d probably left a letterhead or something. He just waited for you to come back to town and went through your room.”
Craig’s face was a puzzle for an instant, and then he sank back into his seat and mopped his forehead, patting it with his handkerchief.
“Thank God!” he gasped.
“Well, we’re through,” said Jamison. “Not much of a case, this. You can get your bonds in the morning at the police station.”
He strolled out the door with the policeman and room-clerk. Craig watched the door close behind them and sprang to his feet in a noiseless bound.
“Good God!” he muttered, desperately. “How — how—”
In a catlike leap he sprang to the cheap bureau in the room. With a jerk he pulled out an empty drawer. He stared at it for an instant, and then brought it down with a crash upon his knee, splintering the bottom utterly. The real bottom of the drawer came out in fragments, and a layer of veneer that fitted neatly over it was twisted and wrecked as well. And tumbling out upon the floor were the eighty neatly engraved bonds, fallen from their hiding place in the neatly contrived false bottom, just where Craig had placed them two hours before. And yet—