“Hardly,” answered Kennedy, after a moment’s consideration, “as long as you have taken none in particular already. Still, I suppose it will do no harm to be as antiseptic as possible.”
“I shall try,” she promised, her face showing that she considered the affair now in a much more serious light than she had before our visit.
“And keep me informed of anything that turns up,” added Kennedy handing her a card with the telephone number of the laboratory.
As we left the Blake mansion, Kennedy remarked, “We must trace that car somehow—at least we must get someone working on that.”
Half an hour later we were in a towering office building on Liberty Street, the home of various kinds of insurance. Kennedy stopped before a door which bore the name, “Douglas Garwood: Insurance Adjuster.”
Briefly, Craig told the story of the stolen car, omitting the account of the dastardly method taken to blackmail Mrs. Blake. As he proceeded a light seemed to break on the face of Garwood, a heavyset man, whose very gaze was inquisitorial.
“Yes, the theft has been reported to us already by Dr. Wilson herself,” he interrupted. “The car was insured in a company I represent.”
“I had hoped so,” remarked Kennedy, “Do you know the woman?” he added, watching the insurance adjuster who had been listening intently as he told about the fair motor car thief.
“Know her?” repeated Garwood emphatically. “Why, man, we have been so close to that woman that I feel almost intimate with her. The descriptions are those of a lady, well-dressed, and with a voice and manner that would carry her through any of the fashionable hotels, perhaps into society itself.”
“One of a gang of blackmailers, then,” I hazarded.