So far, all we knew about the motive in the particular case we were dealing with was that it hadn’t been robbery; unless something we didn’t know about had been stolen—something of sufficient value to make the murderer scorn the money in his victims’ pockets.
We hadn’t altogether neglected the search for the murderer’s trail, of course, but—being human—we had devoted most of our attention to trying to find a shortcut. Now we set out to find our man, or men, regardless of what had urged him or them to commit the crimes.
Of the people who had been registered at the hotel on the day of the killing there were nine men of whose innocence we hadn’t found a reasonable amount of proof. Four of these were still at the hotel, and only one of that four interested us very strongly. That one—a big rawboned man of forty-five or fifty, who had registered as J. J. Cooper of Anaconda, Montana—wasn’t, we had definitely established, really a mining man, as he pretended to be. And our telegraphic communications with Anaconda failed to show that he was known there. Therefore we were having him shadowed—with few results.
Five men of the nine had departed since the murders; three of them leaving forwarding addresses with the mail clerk. Gilbert Jacquemart had occupied room 946 and had ordered his mail forwarded to him at a Los Angeles hotel. W. F. Salway, who had occupied room 1022, had given instructions that his mail be readdressed to a number on Clark Street in Chicago. Ross Orrett, room 609, had asked to have his mail sent to him care of General Delivery at the local post office.
Jacquemart had arrived at the hotel two days before, and had left on the afternoon of the murders. Salway had arrived the day before the murders and had left the day after them. Orrett had arrived on the day of the murders and had left the following day.
Sending telegrams to have the first two found and investigated, I went after Orrett myself. A musical comedy named What For? was being