“So it is, Zizi,” agreed Wise; “but nothing further is certain as yet. But we may find something more.”
As he talked the detective rummaged in the desk drawers. He pulled out the packet of papers that had interested him before.
“I’d like to read these,” he said; “you see, they’re dated in chronological order, and they must mean something.”
“It’s where they come from,” said Zizi, with an air of wisdom; “you see, Waldorf means a certain message in their code book, and St. Regis means another; Biltmore paper means another, and so on.”
“Right you are, as usual,” Wise said, so approvingly that Zizi smiled all over her queer little countenance.
“Part of ‘The Link’s’ spy business,” she went on, and I cried out in denial.
“Oh, come off, Mr. Brice,” she said, “you may as well admit, first as last, that you know Mr. Gately was mixed up in this spy racket. I don’t know yet just how deeply or how knowingly——”
“You mean,” I caught at the straw, “that he was a go-between, but didn’t know it?”
“I thought that at first,” said Wise, “I hoped it was so. That, of course, would argue that he was infatuated with Sadie and she wound him round her finger and used him to further her schemes, while he himself was innocent. But the theory, though a pretty one, won’t work. Gately wasn’t quite gullible enough for that, and, too, he is more deeply concerned in it all than we know.”
“Yes,” I agreed; “these letters,—I mean, these blank sheets,—were sent to him by mail. One came the day after he died.”