The Case of the Smoking Chimney

Chapter 23

Sitting in the lobby of a downtown hotel, with an afternoon paper of the twenty-fourth, Gramps took less than fifteen minutes to realize that every word in the so-called suicide note that had been in the Petrie cabin had been cut from a newspaper of this date. The headlines were all there. One of them, in italics on the back page, was the caption for an editorial. The others were conventional headlines.

Why, then, did Harvey Stanwood have two of these newspapers on his desk?

Gramps gave that problem careful consideration, then with the blade of a razor-sharp penknife, carefully cut from his paper the same words which had been pasted to the sheet of paper so as to form the so-called suicide note.

Having done this, Gramps folded the narrow strips of paper and pushed them down into his vest pocket. Then he folded the newspaper, started to crumple it and drop it into the refuse can near the corner. Abruptly another thought struck him. He smoothed out the mutilated paper, looked at it long and thoughtfully, then, smiling, folded it carefully and left the hotel, his manner that of a man who has become obsessed with a very definite idea.