We had just finished our search when a bellhop brought Detective Sergeant O’Gar, of the police department Homicide Detail, into the room.
“Been down to the agency?” I asked him.
“Yeah, just came from there.”
“What’s new?”
O’Gar pushed back his wide-brimmed black village-constable’s hat and scratched his bullet head.
“Not a heap. The doc says he was opened with a blade at least six inches long by a couple wide, and that he couldn’t of lived two hours after he got the blade—most likely not more’n one. We didn’t find any news on him. What’ve you got here?”
“His name is Rounds. He registered here yesterday from New York. His stuff is new, and there’s nothing on any of it to tell us anything except that he didn’t want to leave a trail. No letters, no memoranda, nothing. No blood, no signs of a row, in the room.”
O’Gar turned to Pederson.
“Any brown men been around the hotel? Hindus or the like?”
“Not that I saw,” the house copper said. “I’ll find out for you.”
“Then the red silk was a sarong?” I asked.
“And an expensive one,” the detective sergeant said. “I saw a lot of ’em the four years I was soldiering on the islands, but I never saw as good a one as that.”