"Don't think he knew how to open his mouth, but there, what with meaning to take his life it's no wonder,—what I mean to say, you couldn't expect him to go on like an ordinary young man, could you?"
Pointer agreed that to a woman of her keen perceptions a difference might be discernible. Had she ever seen any letters lying around?
"Not lying about, no; but she had twice seen Mr. Eames standing by the window reading letters. No, they hadn't looked like old ones—in fact, once she had seen him opening the envelope. On each occasion it had been shortly after breakfast, when she had brought in a carafe left to be cleaned with the others on the floor. Each time Eames had looked around as though not relishing the interruption. He certainly was that sunk in his letters, though it was only a couple of those large square sheets. What I mean to say, not real letters,—you know."
The last time she had heard him lock the bedroom door after her had been on Saturday morning. Yes, she was quite sure that it was yesterday, because directly she heard of the suicide she had thought of that letter. The time before might have been a Wednesday or Thursday—she couldn't be sure.
"Had he looked worried when she saw him?"
No, only awfully keen, and eager, and though he wasn't smiling exactly, he had looked distinctly pleased—this was on Saturday. She had heard him whistling later on as she swept next door.
"Were the sheets typed or written?"
"Written in very close, tiny lines."
Pointer showed her Cox's letter to the Marvel about his room. She was certain that the writing had been much smaller, and also that the paper was different. She had had to come quite close to put the carafe on the table—"Trust you for that," agreed Pointer mentally—and had not been able to help seeing the writing, and the paper all in tiny squares.
"Eh?"
"The paper, sir, all ruled in little squares—such funny paper!" She was quite sure that she had never seen anything of a striped green and white shiny paper such as the detective now showed her.
"Not at any time, sir."
Questioned as to the exact hour when she had last seen Eames yesterday morning, she put it down at about eleven o'clock—the occasion which she had just been telling about when she had seen the young man busy with his letter.
About the afternoon she could say nothing, as on Saturdays she helped In the ironing room from three to six o'clock.
As to visitors, she knew of none. She never saw anyone entering or leaving No. 14 but Mr. Eames himself. No, she had never heard any voices in the room. Asked about a bag, she had seen one once on the table when Mr. Eames was in the room, but never but the once. He kept his wardrobe locked, and she had imagined the bag to be inside. It was yesterday morning when she had seen it for the first and only time. As to his door, he always kept that unlocked,—"I mean to say, unless he was dressing or undressing."
"Now, about Mr. Beale—the gentleman who had occupied No. 14 that evening, had she ever seen him before?"
"Well, sir, I thought I had yesterday morning coming along the corridor with the manager, but the housekeeper said it was quite another gentleman, a Mr. Sikes she called him, but he certainly did look very like the American gentleman, as I said to him myself."
"Said to whom?"
"To the gentleman last night when I made up the room. He was sitting by the window, and I said to him that surely I had seen him earlier in the day—what I mean to say—"
"What did Mr. Beale say?" asked Pointer, feeling that flesh and blood could stand but little more of this damsel's conversation.
She could not remember what reply her remark had called forth, which was not surprising, since Mr. Beale, as a matter of fact, had received it in silence.
He could learn nothing more from her except that the hour when she had met the man whom she took to be Mr. Beale in company with the manager, had been some time during the lunch hour,—between one and two-thirty, in other words. All his skill in bringing the conversation around to the manager brought him no reward. She knew nothing of anyone's movements yesterday afternoon, so with a compliment on her clear way of stating facts she was dismissed.
Alone in the room, Pointer unlocked one of the two top drawers whose tidiness had struck him last night. He put his hand to the back and brought out a little box wrapped neatly in green and white striped paper. He compared it with the torn end which he had picked up in the manager's sitting-room. It was identical. The square in which a small box of pearl studs was folded was entire. It must have been from another piece this corner came. Had it also been wrapped around jewelery? He looked at the studs. They were small but good ones. Genuine as far as he could tell—at any rate the gold stems and general workmanship looked like a superior article. He took the little box from the drawer and promoted it to a resting place in his black bag, to be transferred on the morrow to his safe at the Yard. The piece of paper the manager had stepped on so promptly he put into an envelope beside it.
CHAPTER III
POINTER had been certain from the first that Eames must have had some place not far from the hotel to which his correspondence was directed. Moreover, early that morning he had marked a small tobacconist in a poor street around the corner, quite out of the run of usual passers-by, as the most likely nook to which Eames would have had his letters sent. Since then he had learnt more. The paper, ruled in little squares—suggesting a foreign origin—the small, close writing like that used by Cox in the hotel register next door; Eames' eager interest on the last morning he had been alive, his whistling later in the same day, were all additional material for the mosaic the police had to fit together. Downstairs Pointer learnt that the only Mr. Sikes known to the hotel had been there a few times, but had never been seen to come in merely as a visitor. Neither the clerk nor the hall porter remembered seeing him yesterday. But as that had been an unusually strenuous time of welcoming coming and speeding parting guests, Mr. Sikes might have passed unnoticed, though both men thought this most unlikely. He certainly had not made himself known in any way.
On the register he was entered as a cycle-maker from Coventry. His description tallied with that of Mr. Beale as far as being a little, stout, reddish-haired, middle-aged man, though both clerk and porter ridiculed the idea of mistaking the one for the other.
The manager turned very sharply, almost as though with a start, when the Chief Inspector stopped him a little later with:
"I believe, sir, that a Mr. Sikes of Coventry often comes to your hotel. Was he here yesterday?"
The manager, as so often today, hesitated before answering the officer.
"I don't—I don't think so. No, no, I'm sure he was not. But why don't you look at the register?" This last in a tone of nervous irritation.
"Oh, he didn't stop in the house, but I thought he might have been in just the same."
"And what the devil has this Mr. Sikes to do with the affair which you are presumably investigating, Inspector?"
Pointer did not seem to hear the question, as with quick steps he passed on up the stairs and went at once in search of the housekeeper.
"Ah, I was on my way downstairs, but perhaps you can save me the trouble, Mrs. Green—" he beamed at her, and she beamed back at him, for he was a good-looking man.
"When Mr. Sikes was here on Saturday last, did you see him speaking to Mr. Eames at all?"
The housekeeper looked a little uncertain of her ground.
"Well, sir, I don't know the gentleman you're speaking of—Mr. Sikes—I haven't ever seen him."
"Not know