He put Torigai's letter in his pocket, left the office and walked to his favorite coffee shop.
It was still lunchtime and the place was crowded. A waitress noticed him looking for a seat and indicated a table to him. It was already occupied by a young girl, sitting alone and drinking tea. The chair opposite her was vacant. Ill at ease at sharing a table with a strange girl, he seated himself on the edge of the chair and drank his coffee self-consciously, aware that his perplexity showed in his face.
Although Jūtarō Torigai's letter had helped to raise his flagging spirits it was not very encouraging. The old man's ideas were too general. His suggestion that one of the two couples who got off at the two Kashii stations, minutes apart, the night of the twentieth, included an unidentified woman was interesting but, as the old detective himself admitted, there was no proof. The couples might have happened to leave the two stations at about the same time and need not be related in any way. Or, again, it could be that Sayama and Otoki were first seen leaving the Kashii main station, then seen again by a different witness as they walked past the other Kashii station. According to Torigai's own measurement of the distance between the two stations, this was possible.
Mihara was certain that Yasuda was on Kashii Beach that night and that he was in some way connected with the suicides, but to bring a mysterious woman into the situation now seemed too fantastic. Yasuda was not the sort of man to have an accomplice. Why was not clear to Mihara; he just felt it was so. Moreover, Torigai's suggestion that the woman who telephoned Sayama at his inn was not Otoki was based on the vague assumtion that the four people emerging from the two Kashii stations were Sayama, Otoki, Yasuda and the unknown woman.
More interesting was Torigai's opinion of why Yasuda had wanted a witness at Sayama and Otoki's departure from Tokyo Station. He was suggesting that it was to make the witness believe that they were lovers. Torigai was intimating that they were probably not lovers. If that were true, it would be all the more necessary to have a witness observe them gaily boarding the train together. They ended up committing suicide near Hakata, the destination of the super-express. Looked at from any angle, there could be no doubt that it was a double suicide. So here was the problem. Why would two people who were not lovers commit suicide together? As he asked himself the question Mihara could see Yasuda's figure flitting behind the contradictions.
The reason why Otoki got off at Atami or Shizuoka was still unanswered, but it was unimportant. The question had been raised by old Torigai merely on the evidence of the dining car receipt made out to one person. It was an interesting lead, prompted by his daughter's comments, but there was no proof. It was simply an assumption. The old man's perceptions were sharp but he was short of facts, of evidence. He wanted Otoki's movements traced after she left the train either at Atami or Shizuoka, but so much time had elapsed this would not only be difficult to do, the investigation itself would be meaningless.
Mihara, drinking his coffee and still looking glum, had reached this point in his reflections when a shadow fell across the table and a young man took the vacant seat opposite, next to the young girl.
"Sorry to be late," he said to the girl.
She had suddenly come alive, her face radiant. "What will you have?" she asked, looking at him eagerly.
"Coffee."
He gave the order to the waitress, "Have you been waiting long?" He was smiling at her.
"About forty minutes. Too long for one cup of coffee, so I ordered a cup of tea too."
"I'm sorry." He looked apologetic. "The bus was a long time coming. They're so irregular on that line. They can be as much as twenty minutes late. It's very annoying."
"Since the bus is to blame I have nothing to say." She looked at her watch. "The show has already started. Let's hurry."
Mihara listened idly to their conversation. There was nothing unusual about it. In the time it took him to light a cigarette the young man had sipped a mouthful of coffee and was on his feet. Mihara settled back and relaxed. Their cups were still on the table, one only half empty. The young man must live in the outskirts if the bus schedules were so irregular, Mihara was thinking. His mind, unconcerned for the moment with his own problems, was filled with idle thoughts.
No, not entirely idle. Mihara came to with a start. An idea had suddenly entered his mind. Yasuda did not have Kawanishi meet him on the railway platform at Sapporo; in his telegram he clearly indicated the waiting room of the station because he feared the plane might be delayed by bad weather.
Mihara stared at the painting on the wall, as if afraid to move. Since Yasuda planned to arrive by the Marimo, it would have been more effective to have Kawanishi meet him on the platform. That he did not have him do so was because planes are often delayed by the weather. Had the plane been seriously delayed, he would not have had time to travel from Sapporo to Otaru and catch the Marimo there. And if he were not on the Marimo and Kawanishi had come to meet him on the platform, it would be obvious he had not arrived by train. A very cautious Yasuda had foreseen this possibility and in his telegram had asked Kawanishi to meet him in the waiting room.
Mihara's eyes brightened with the joy of discovery. This is it, he thought. Yasuda's devious plan has only served to reveal that he actually used a plane.
He left the coffee shop feeling unusually elated. Outside, the sun was bright and inviting.
But wait a moment, he said to himself. From where did Yasuda send that telegram?
Mihara decided to check again on Yasuda's trip to Hokkaido. He had played tricks on that trip, which showed he had expected to be investigated. The encounter with the Hokkaido governmerit official on the train was one, but the most obvious was the request for Kawanishi to meet him at Sapporo Station. Kawa-nishi had admitted the business was not urgent and there was no need for him to go to the station. From where did Yasuda send the telegram? When Mihara had talked to him, Kawanishi had said he had thrown it away without noticing where it had been dispatched from.
Yasuda left Fukuoka by plane the morning of the twenty-first. Did he send it from the Fukuoka or Hakata telegraph office, or perhaps from the local airport? No, that could not be. He was a careful man; Kawanishi might notice the name of the dispatching office. He would probably send it from Tokyo. He had an hour to spare between the time his plane arrived at Haneda and his connecting flight left for Sapporo. No, that was not possible either. Upon arriving at Haneda he would know if the Sapporo plane was leaving on time. And if it left on time, he would be able to turn back from Sapporo and catch the Marimo at Otaru. There would be no reason, therefore, to have Kawanishi meet him in the station waiting room. It would be more convincing if he were met on the platform and actually seen getting off the train.
Mihara opened his notebook. Kawanishi had told him he thought the telegram had been sent at the ordinary rate and that he had received it about eleven o'clock on the twenty-first. Eleven o'clock meant that it was probably dispatched about nine in the morning, assuming that an ordinary telegram took two hours from Tokyo to Sapporo. But at that hour, Yasuda was in the plane that had left Itazuke Airport. He would be flying over Hiroshima or Okayama prefecture. He could not possibly have sent the wire himself from Tokyo.
How about Fukuoka? Since it could also be assumed that it took about two hours for a telegram to get from Fukuoka to Sapporo, if Yasuda had sent it around eight o'clock from Itazuke Airport, before the takeoff, it would be delivered to Kawanishi about eleven o'clock. Could he then have sent it from Fukuoka?
It would be unnaturally careless of him to reveal the dispatching office. Nevertheless, Mihara decided to ask the police at Fukuoka to check all outgoing telegrams on January 21.
He returned to the Metropolitan Police Board and outlined his plan to Kasai.