“A Sleek Kitten That Dame!”
At eleven o’clock that same morning, when, brisk and fresh with five hours’ sleep under my belt, I arrived at the police detective bureau, I found O’Gar slumped down at his desk, staring dazedly at a black shoe, half a dozen collar buttons, a rusty flat key, and a rumpled newspaper—all lined up before him.
“What’s all this? Souvenir of your wedding?”
“Might as well be.” His voice was heavy with disgust. “Listen to this: one of the porters of the Seamen’s National Bank found a package in the vestibule when he started cleaning up this morning. It was this shoe—Gantvoort’s missing one—wrapped in this sheet of a five-day-old Philadelphia Record , and with these collar buttons and this old key in it. The heel of the shoe, you’ll notice, has been pried off, and is still missing. Whipple identifies it all right, as well as two of the collar buttons, but he never saw the key before. These other four collar buttons are new, and common gold-rolled ones. The key don’t look like it had had much use for a long time. What do you make of all that?”
I couldn’t make anything out of it.
“How did the porter happen to turn the stuff in?”
“Oh, the whole story was in the morning papers—all about the missing shoe and collar buttons and all.”
“What did you learn about the typewriter?” I asked.
“The letter and the list were written with it, right enough; but we haven’t been able to find where it came from yet. We checked up the doc who