“Note the design,” Zizi went on, “see just how the fronds are marked. Isn’t it funny how people always draw or scribble while they’re waiting to get a telephone call?”
“Oh, come now, Ziz,” and Penny Wise patted her arm, “you’re putting up a game on us. We know Rivers draws these things beautifully. Why act as if you never knew it before?”
“Come with me,” and Zizi rose and began to put her long black cloak round her, shivering with excitement as she did so. “You come, too, Mr. Brice.”
We obeyed the strange child, for I remembered how Pennington Wise respected what he called her “hunches,” and before going downstairs she directed that I call a taxicab.
In the cab she said nothing, having already bade us go to Amos Gately’s office, and arrange to get into the rooms.
And then, when we were there, when I had obtained the keys from the bank people and had entered the dim, quiet rooms, Zizi went straight to the middle room, straight to Amos Gately’s desk, and lifting the telephone from where it stood on the big desk-blotter, she disclosed the exact counterpart of the snow crystal we had seen drawn at my desk by Case Rivers!
CHAPTER XVI
The Snowflake
I looked at the design with interest, but without at first grasping its true significance.
Pennington Wise looked at it aghast. “Where did it come from?” he exclaimed.
“It’s always been there,” said Zizi. “I mean, I saw it there one day when I was in this room with Mr. Hudson, I—I——”