“Yes, sir.”
“Report to me as soon as you’ve finished, or find anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lieutenant Valcour closed the door again. The revolver would clinch the case: Mrs. Endicott the principal, and Hollander the accomplice. What a sweet bunch of muck it would be, too. There were all sorts of sob angles: Hollander and Endicott as Damon and Pythias, brothers in arms during the war who were transformed through the vicious caprice of a siren into Cain and Abel. Or would Mrs. Endicott spatter the tabloids as a woman wronged who had by a reversal of the usual position of the sexes taken her just revenge beneath the legendary cloak of the unwritten law? If her lawyers were smart, she would. And they would be smart, too. She’d probably have the most impressive battery of legal guns that were procurable in the state lined up on her side.
It wasn’t the gun only that Lieutenant Valcour wanted. There was something else. Endicott’s hat: that was it. How did the person who had been caught in the cupboard fit in with Endicott’s hat? The answer came to him with the sudden clearness that will enlighten a problem that the subconscious mind has been working on for some time. The hat was the final touch to the person’s disguise. And the fact would presuppose a woman. A man’s hat would add immeasurably to any disguise adopted by a woman.
But which woman?
And why had his hat been in the cupboard?
And still there was no answer to the baffling question as to what had been the object of the search through Endicott’s pockets and his papers. There was, of course, a perfectly plain and logically possible solution: the