An interval followed, during which McLear left to answer a personal call on another wire.
As Kennedy hung up the receiver, his face wore a peculiar look. “It was Mrs. Moulton,” he blurted out. “She thinks that her husband has found out that the necklace is paste.”
“How?” I asked.
“The paste replica is gone from her wall safe in the Deluxe.”
I turned, startled at the information. Even Kennedy himself was perplexed at the sudden succession of events. I had nothing to say.
Evidently, however, his rule was when in doubt play a trump, for, twenty minutes later found us in the office of Lynn Moulton, the famous corporation lawyer, in Wall Street.
Moulton was a handsome man of past fifty with a youthful face against his iron gray hair and mustache, well dressed, genial, a man who seemed keenly in love with the good things of life.
“It is rumored,” began Kennedy, “that an attempt was made on your safe here at the office last night.”
“Yes,” he admitted, taking off his glasses and polishing them carefully. “I suppose there is no need of concealment, especially as I hear that a somewhat similar attempt was made on the safe of my friend Herman Schloss in Maiden Lane.”
“You lost nothing?”