Whitney's only known way of thanking anybody was to invite them to adjourn to the cafe, and accordingly we started across the hall, after he had gathered up his correspondence. The information had made more work that night impossible for him.
As we crossed from the writing-room, we saw Alfonso de Moche coming in from the street. He saw us and came over to speak. Was it a coincidence, or was it merely a blind? Was he the one who had got away and now calculated to come back and throw us off guard?
Whitney asked him where he had been, but he replied quickly that his mother had not been feeling very well after dinner and had gone to bed, while he strolled out and had dropped into a picture show. That, I felt, was at least clever. The intruder had been a man.
De Moche excused himself, and we continued our walk to the cafe, where
Whitney restored his shattered peace of mind somewhat.
"What's the result of your detective work on Norton?" ventured Kennedy at last, seeing that Whitney was in a more expansive frame of mind, and taking a chance.
"Oh," returned Whitney, "he's scared, all right. Why, he has been hanging around this hotel—watching me. He thinks I don't know it, I suppose, but I do."
Kennedy and I exchanged glances.
"But he's slippery," went on Whitney. "He knows that he is being shadowed and the men tell me that they lose him, now and then. To tell the truth I don't trust most of these private detectives. I think their little tissue paper reports are half-faked, anyhow."
He seemed to want to say no more on the subject, from which I took it that he had discovered nothing of importance.
"One thing, though," he recollected, after a moment. "He has been going to see Inez Mendoza, they tell me."