Pink Ears

II

A rather shabby young man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth strolled into the room without the formality of knocking. He nodded ungraciously at Craig.

“I’m Jamison,” he said gloomily, “Police Headquarters. They sent me down to find out about this robbery. What’s up?”

Craig, no more than the wreck of the debonair man of a half hour before, told his story, with his eyes glowing strangely from sunken sockets. Jamison listened from a comfortable chair, gazing at the ceiling.

“Y’ went out?” he queried, when Craig had finished. “Why didn’t you leave the bonds in the hotel safe?”

“I should have,” groaned Craig wretchedly. “But no one knew I had them with me. Only the president of my firm and myself knew I had them. We thought that if I just went on up to New York quite casually, as if on an ordinary business trip, there’d be no suspicion of my having anything valuable with me. God! If I’d only known!”

“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.