Patricia had stood drinking in this information with swiftly beating heart. "Chester," she exclaimed softly, "this is fine of you, and I appreciate what you have done more than I can tell you, and so would Father if he knew! But tell me, who is this 'Franz' and 'Hofmeyer'? Have you discovered that? I have a special reason for asking."
"There ain't any one in this place who goes by either of them two names," he replied, "but of course that don't count. Naturally, they ain't the names any one would hand in here. But I got my suspicions about one person in this here hotel, an' I think I don't have to give you a hundred guesses who, either." He looked at her meaningly.
"You—you mean the waiter, Peter Stoger?" she hesitated.
"You said it!" he remarked succinctly. "He's a shady one, all right! Say, if you'll believe me, I seen him once without his gilt teeth—"
"What?" gasped Patricia, incredulously.
"Yep, they was nothin' but a set of false caps, fit on over his real teeth. He was hurryin' down the hall from his room, an' I guess he'd had 'em off an' forgotten 'em. After I passed him, I looked back an' saw him take somethin' out of his pocket an' raise his hands to his mouth. Oh, he's slick, all right! An' that funny droop in his eye, too. Once in a while he ain't got that, either. He can do it himself somehow or other. They're both just disguises, that's all. An' I bet my hat he's either Franz or Hofmeyer, for looka here: he came the same day you folks did."
"Oh, I knew it!" sighed Patricia. "I knew there was something wrong about him. I've felt it all along. But tell me, Chester, one more thing. I must ask it, though I hate to. Have you ever discovered anything—queer about—about Madame Vanderpoel and—and Mademoiselle de Vos? I hate to ask it about them, but—but I have a reason."
"They was a curious pair, all right," replied Chet musingly. "An' I could never rightly make 'em out. At first I was on to 'em good an' proper, because the madame had her room changed from one on the next floor to down here right opposite you. An' she sure did act queer to that little mam'selle; or at least the mam'selle acted queer to her—as if she just couldn't stand her. But I never saw the madame act ugly to her till to-day when she wouldn't give her a chance to send you that message. I watched 'em like a cat, but I never saw nothin' that made me suspicious that they was harmful to you folks, an' you seemed to cotton so to the little mam'selle. But there was somethin' always that seemed to me blamed funny in the way she hated that madame, an' it used to make me want to find out why.
"But say, I gotta go down now. I don't darst stay here another minute, this trip. But before I go, I'll tell you this much. After that pair left to-day, I had an errand on this floor, an' I just sauntered into their vacant room a moment, before the chambermaid cleaned it up, to have a look around. They hadn't left nothin' of interest, that I could see, except just this. I found it in the waste-basket. Maybe you'd like to have it."
He thrust a piece of torn and crumpled paper into Patricia's hand and was gone before she had time to say another word.