Paul Pry moved through the dining-room and into the kitchen.
Then he walked back to the bedroom, turned the flashlight into the closet.
The closet was well filled with clothes of expensive texture. They were feminine garments, and it needed no price tag to show either their quality or their high initial cost.
Paul Pry looked in the bureau drawers and found filmy silk underthings, expensive hose, silk lounging pyjamas. He left the bureau and entered the other room. Here he found a closet well crammed with masculine garments. There was a writing desk in this room, and a chequebook in a pigeon hole of the writing desk. Paul Pry took out the chequebook and looked at the stubs.
The stubs were virtually all in a feminine handwriting. They ran to an alarming total.
He was putting the chequebook back in its compartment, when his eye caught a letter with a special-delivery stamp on it. The letter was addressed to Gertrude Fenwick and the address was that of the apartment house. It had been very neatly typewritten and there was no return address on the envelope.
Paul shamelessly inserted his fingers under the flap of the envelope, took out a sheet of typewritten paper and proceeded to read:
My Dear Miss Fenwick:
I dislike very much to involve you in this matter, but I am addressing this communication to you in order that it may reach the eyes of Mr. Charles B Darwin.
I feel that when Mr. Darwin realizes that even the carefully guarded secret of this apartment is known to the undersigned, he may, perhaps, be more inclined to give heed to my requests.
My last request was turned over to the police, despite the fact that I warned him that such a course would be disastrous. I am now giving him one last chance.
If he will make a cheque, payable to bearer, to an amount of twenty-five thousand dollars, address it to Fremont Burke, at General Delivery, and make certain that no attempt is made to follow the person who is to receive that letter and cash the cheque, and in no way seek to trace such a person by marked money or otherwise, and if he will further use his influence to notify his friend, Mr. Perry C Hammond, that he is making such a remittance, and that he feels it would be well for Mr. Hammond to make such a remittance, then he will be unmolested. The secret of this apartment will remain a secret and he need fear no physical violence from the undersigned.
If, on the other hand, he continues in his course of obstinate refusal to comply with my wishes, if he continues to unite with Mr. Hammond in employing private investigators to seek to learn my identity, his fate and that of Mr. Hammond will be the fate of Mr. Harry Travers.
Very truly yours,
The letter was unsigned, except for the diagram of several interlocking “x’s” which formed a rude diagram of a cross-stitch, similar to the stitch which had been placed across the lips of the dead body of Harry Travers, and, later, across those of Charles B Darwin.
Paul Pry whistled softly when he had read the letter, folded it and thrust it in his pocket. He had directed the beam of the flashlight once more upon the desk, when his ears caught the metallic click of a key being inserted in the lock of the door which led to the corridor.
Paul Pry switched out the flashlight and stood motionless.
He heard the sound of the door open, then closing, and the noise made by the spring lock as it snapped into place. Then he heard the rustle of garments, and the click of a light switch.
Paul Pry slipped the sword cane down from the place where he had it clamped under his arm and moved on furtive feet, stepping noiselessly upon the tiled floor of the bathroom, to where he could look into the bedroom.
There was no one in the bedroom, but a mirror showed him the reflection of the person who had entered the apartment.
She was perhaps twenty-six years of age, slender, well formed, grey-eyed, blonde, and exceedingly nervous. She had carried two suitcases into the apartment, and the suitcases now reposed on the carpet near her feet, one on either side.
For a moment, Paul Pry saw her reflection in the mirror clearly. Then she moved out of his range of vision, and he suddenly realized she was coming directly toward the bathroom.
He flattened himself in the shadows just back of the door and waited.
The light switch clicked in the bedroom. There was the sound of swift surreptitious movement.
Paul Pry waited for more than a minute. Then, curiosity getting the better of discretion, he peered round the edge of the door.
The young woman had divested herself of her outer garments, and stood attired in filmy underthings, looking at herself in the mirror. As Paul Pry watched, she picked up a dress from the bed, slipped it on, and surveyed the effect.
She nodded to herself with evident approval at what she saw in the mirror, then pulled the dress off over her head.
The dress which she had worn when she entered the apartment, a grey affair which displayed to advantage the curves of her willowy figure, lay upon the bed. Paul Pry waited for her to put it on. Instead, however, she took lingerie from the drawer of the bureau, held it against the satin smoothness of her skin and once more surveyed the reflection with critical inspection.
At length, she picked up the grey dress, slipped it over her head, adjusted it in front of the mirror, then walked rapidly to the living-room, where she picked up the suitcases and carried them into the bedroom. She laid the suitcases on the bed, opened them and started folding the garments into them.
Paul Pry, watching from his place of concealment, saw that the suitcases had been empty when she took them into the room; that she carefully folded the gowns, packing the cases as tightly as possible; that she also put in the elaborately embroidered silk lingerie which she had taken from the bureau drawer.
When both cases had been packed to the point of bursting with the most modish of gowns, the most expensive selection of underthings and accessories, the young woman struggled with the straps, trying to get the suitcases closed.
It was at that moment that Paul Pry, his sword cane held under his arm, his hat in his hand, stepped into the bedroom.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
She gave a sudden scream, jumped back from the bed and stared at him with wide, startled eyes.
Paul Pry bowed courteously. “I happened,” he explained, “to be in the bathroom. I couldn’t help watching you. Perhaps it is a ‘Peeping Tom’ complex that I have. I didn’t know I possessed it until just this moment, but you were beautiful, and I was curious. Need more be said?”
She was white to the lips. She stared at him wordlessly.
“But,” Paul Pry went on, “having been permitted to invade the privacy of milady’s boudoir, I recognized the obligations which are incident to the benefits. Apparently you need someone to assist you in closing the suitcases. May I offer my services?”
Words came chokingly from her lips.
“Who... who... who are you, and what do you want?”
“The name,” he said, “really doesn’t matter, I assure you. It doesn’t matter in the slightest. When people get acquainted under such charmingly informal circumstances, I think names have but little to do with it. Suppose, therefore, that I shall call you Gertrude, and you call me Paul?”
“But,” she said with swift alarm, “my name is not Gertrude.”
“No?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “My name is—”
“Yes, yes,” he told her, “go on. Only the first name, if you please. I am not interested in last names.”