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"Maybe not," I said, reckoning on something human in Dykeman to appeal to. "You see I know where Worth got that suitcase. It came out of my office vault evidence we'd gathered in the Clayte hunt. Getting it and using it that way was his idea of humor, I suppose." "Sounds fishy." Dykeman made an uncomfortable shift in his chair.
You've said from the first that this crime was a conspiracy a big thing directed by brains on the outside. Clayte was the tool. Whose tool was he? That's what we want to know." And Anson trundled along, "These men who have been in the war get a contempt for law, there's no doubt about it. Captain Gilbert might " "No names!" Whipple's hand went up in protest. "No accusations, gentlemen, please; Mr.
"I'm not in this, of course, except that your kindness allowed me to be for this day only. But if I were, I shouldn't be following Skeels as you are. I'd still be after Clayte." "It foots up to the same thing," I said rather tartly. "Oh, does it?" she laughed at me. "Two and two are making about three and a half this afternoon, are they?"
Meantime I made haste to shove the photographs before them. Cummings passed them back with an indifferent, "What's the idea?" "You don't recognize him?" "Never saw the man in my life," and again he asked, "What's the idea?" "You'd recognize a picture of Clayte?" I countered with a question of my own. "Yes I think so," rather dubiously. "But Dykeman would. Show them to him."
She hung around for five minutes, I should say, beating on the door, calling, asking if anything was wrong. "My one big mistake in the study was that diary of 1920. It lay open on the desk where he'd been writing. It did tell of his having identified me as Clayte. I'd not expected it, and so I didn't handle it well. Time pressed.
"Exactly and precisely," he said, "the same words you had in that other fool description of him." "Of whom?" "Clayte." Worth let me have the one word straight between the eyes, and I leaned back in my chair, the breath almost knocked out of me by it. By an effort I pulled myself together and turned to the girl: "Take dictation, please: Skeel's eyes are wide apart, rather small but keen "
"Just back from the south yourself, aren't you?" I countered. "Sure," airily. "But I wasn't there to butt in on your game. Did you find that Skeels was Clayte?" I merely looked over the flame of my match at that small-town society man, smiling back at me with a show of polite interest. "Go on," Worth interpreted. "Vandeman knows all about it.
Dunstan, above Clayte's window I asked the clerk there how long since the building had been reroofed, because there were nicks made by that hook and half filled with tar that had been slushed up against the coping and into the lowest dents. You see what that means?" "That Clayte or some accomplice of his had been using the route more than four years ago. Yes."
"Or rather, put it in plain American, so we all can understand." "Mr. Boyne knows what I mean." Barbara gave me a faint smile. "Mr. Boyne and I add up Skeels and Clayte, and get a different result. That's all." "Bobs doesn't think that Skeels is Clayte, caught or uncaught," Worth said briefly and went on eating his dinner. Apparently he didn't give a hang which way the fact turned out to be.
"In that case, Clayte would inevitably be one of the wonderful men of the world," she repeated her characterization with the placid, soft obstinacy of falling, snow. "Didn't you stop a minute one little minute, Mr.
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