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Greenleaf, taking his cue from Bristow, said nothing. "I came in without notifying anybody," Withers felt himself obliged to continue, "and I registered under an assumed name." "Where?" the lame man asked swiftly. "At the Brevord." "What name under what name?" "Waring, Charles B. Waring." "And you've been in Furmville since yesterday morning? Got here on the eight o'clock train yesterday morning?"
Morley had been pointed out to him in the hotel earlier in the day, and Abrahamson's memory sketched a fairly good likeness of the young man as he remembered him. Why not make certain of it at once? "You've been very obliging," he continued, "and, I suppose, that's why I feel I can impose on you further. I confide in you, as you did in me. I'm going back to the Brevord now.
"I went to the Brevord and registered under the name of Waring. After I had had breakfast, I went straight to Abrahamson's pawnshop. It's the only pawnshop in town. I told him I was looking for some stolen jewelry and I expected that an attempt might be made to pawn it with him. He agreed to let me wait there, well concealed by the heavy hangings at the back of his shop.
Instead, he was called upon to consider a phase of the Withers murder more amazing than any of those so far uncovered. Barely ten minutes after his conversation with the clerk of the Brevord, Mattie announced that two gentlemen were waiting to see him, one of them being the chief of police. When Bristow stepped into the living room, Greenleaf introduced the stranger. He was Mr. Withers Mr.
"Having suspected the identity of the disguised man, I was confronted with two jobs. One was to prove the identity beyond question; the other was to show, by irrefutable evidence, that the disguised man committed the murder. As I said, my theory took shape in my mind that afternoon in my room in the Brevord Hotel.
"Don't hurry," Bristow said with a touch of sarcasm. "You're too good at missing trains anyway. Besides, we want to know what you did between midnight and two-ten this morning, and why you failed to tell us this morning that you didn't register at the Brevord until after two." Morley's face went white. "There wasn't anything to that," he explained. "I didn't mean to conceal anything.
The men on guard down there at Number Five wouldn't let me in to see him said I'd better see you." "What have you got, Avery?" asked Greenleaf. "It's a little package. You know, I'm on that beat down there. Takes in the Brevord Hotel. The clerk said this Mr. Morley had sent his grips to the station, but had said he was coming up to Number Five, Manniston Road.
He was very much agitated when he came from her room." "There's another thing," added Bristow. "Morley has two hours of last night to account for. He told us he missed the midnight train and went to the Brevord to spend the night. As a matter of fact, he registered at the Brevord a little after two o'clock this morning." The chief's jaw dropped. "How do you know that?"
Was the boy Roddy wide enough awake that night to have formed any real opinion as to the resemblance of the bearded man and Henry Morley? The trip to the post-office did that explain the disappearance of the stolen jewelry? Had Morley mailed it at once to himself, or somebody else, in Washington? Withers had returned to the Brevord early Monday night. That must have been before half-past twelve.
No, he decided; the time for that would come after the grinding work in Washington. Bristow himself was far from being a sentimental man. If he had been in Braceway's place, he would have preferred to hear nothing about the girl and her emotions until after the completion of the work. "Are you packed up?" Braceway asked. "Ready to go?" "Almost." "Well, suppose we drift on down to the Brevord.
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