"Did you meet the Titian?" I asked.
"Yes. She is the stenographer and sometimes works the switchboard of the telephone. I happened to strike the office while the clerk was at dinner and she was alone. While I was talking to her I was looking about and my eye happened to fall on one of the letter boxes back of the desk, marked 'Dr. Harris.' Well, at once I had an overwhelming desire to get a note which I saw sticking in it. So I called up a telephone number, just as a blind, and while she was at the switchboard I slipped the note into my pocket. Here it is."
He had laid an envelope down before us. It was in a woman's hand, written hastily.
"I'd like to know what was in it without Dr. Harris knowing it," he remarked. "Now, the secret service agents abroad have raised letter-opening to a fine art. Some kinds of paper can be steamed open without leaving a trace, and then they follow that simple operation by reburnishing the flap with a bone instrument. But that won't do. It might make this ink run."
Among the ornaments were several with flat wooden bases. Kennedy took one and placed it on the edge of the table, which was perfectly square. Then he placed the envelope between the table and the base.
"When other methods fail," he went on, "they place the envelope between two pieces of wood with the edges projecting about a thirty-second of an inch."
He had first flattened the edge of the envelope, then roughened it, and finally slit it open.
"Scientific letter-opening," he remarked, as he pulled out a little note written on the hotel paper. It read:
DEAR HARRY:
Called you up twice and then dropped into the hotel, but you seem to be out all the time. Have something VERY IMPORTANT to tell you. Shall be busy to-night and in the morning, but will be at the dansant at the Futurist Tea Room to-morrow afternoon about four. Be sure to be there.