“There’s something to that, Mr Gibbs,” and Bob Moore looked at the detective admiringly. “Now, if it was a case of Miss Prall and Miss Gurney, they’re so much together, that such a message would be practically unnecessary. So it may point to the chambermaids. You see, Maggie is on his floor, but he may have meant that Jane, too, was implicated.”
“Oh, rubbish!” cried Corson. “A dying man isn’t going to use his last gasp to tell the police to get a certain chambermaid! That word isn’t ‘both’ at all. It’s something far more significant. I think it’s a name. I think it’s a name that begins with Ba or Bo. Now, I’m as well aware as you two men are, that my own name begins with Bo and my girl’s last name with Ba. But I’m not afraid, for I didn’t do it. I was upstairs at the time, and anyway I’d no grudge against the old fellow. Nor did Julie do it. And he never would have called her Baxter, if she had! So, I say that I think it represents some name, and all possible names ought to be investigated.”
“The trouble is it might represent so many names,” Gibbs said. “I think myself that he might have meant to make a capital letter and only achieved a small one, but never mind that. Ba could be Babe Russell,—but I can’t seem to think he’d take that method of accusation. If it had been a man who killed him he would be more likely to feel revengeful.”
“Good heavens, Gibbs!” and Corson’s eyes opened wide; “I guess if you’d just been fatally stabbed by your lady friends, and had enough spunk to tell that women killed you, you wouldn’t hesitate at bringing a name into the limelight! I’ve had a hunch it was that Baby Doll all along,—but it looked like an impossibility.”
“So you see,” offered Bob Moore, “you can’t deduce much from that second line. And we may be ‘way off. It might have been meant for, ‘Get busy’ or ‘Get Bob Moore to find the criminal,’ or lots of things.”
“This is no time for fooling, Moore,” said Corson, gravely, “but you’re right that it’s wasting time to puzzle over that phase of the message. We’re lucky in having the clear direction as to the sex of the criminal,——”
“Unless it’s all faked,” suggested Gibbs. “How about the murderer being a clever man, who had this paper all ready, and brought it with him and laid it beside his victim?”
“Not a chance,” said Moore. “I’ve checked up that handwriting and it’s his. Mr Bates says so, and I’ve compared it to his writing,—lots of it. That’s Sir Binney’s fist, all right.”
Feeling they had learned all they could from Moore, and also feeling decidedly tired and sleepy, the two detectives went home and to bed.
Not at once to sleep, however, for each had lots of thinking to do and each felt that there were more ways to look than had yet appeared.