Pointer showed her Cox's letter to the Marvel about his room. She was certain that the writing had been much smaller, and also that the paper was different. She had had to come quite close to put the carafe on the table—“Trust you for that,” agreed Pointer mentally—and had not been able to help seeing the writing, and the paper all in tiny squares.
“Eh?”
“The paper, sir, all ruled in little squares—such funny paper!” She was quite sure that she had never seen anything of a striped green and white shiny paper such as the detective now showed her.
“Not at any time, sir.”
Questioned as to the exact hour when she had last seen Eames yesterday morning, she put it down at about eleven o'clock—the occasion which she had just been telling about when she had seen the young man busy with his letter.
About the afternoon she could say nothing, as on Saturdays she helped in the ironing room from three to six o'clock.
As to visitors, she knew of none. She never saw anyone entering or leaving No. 14 but Mr. Eames himself. No, she had never heard any voices in the room. Asked about a bag, she had seen one once on the table when Mr. Eames was in the room, but never but the once. He kept his wardrobe locked, and she had imagined the bag to be inside. It was yesterday morning when she had seen it for the first and only time. As to his door, he always kept that unlocked,—“I mean to say, unless he was dressing or undressing.”
“Now, about Mr. Beale—the gentleman who had occupied No. 14 that evening, had she ever seen him before?”
“Well, sir, I thought I had yesterday morning coming along the corridor with the manager, but the housekeeper said it was quite another gentleman, a Mr. Sikes she called him, but he certainly did look very like the American gentleman, as I said to him myself.”
“Said to whom?”