“Every person who set foot in this room on that day is his potential murderer,” Wise returned, calmly. “Every person must be suspected,—or, at least, investigated.”
“Well,” I said, after realizing that he spoke truly, “you investigate the question of Rivers’ visit here that day. I don’t want to do that. But I’m going down to Headquarters now, and perhaps I’ll dig up something of importance.”
And I did. A visit to the Chief told me the interesting tale of the further discoveries of Sadie Kent’s industries. It seems the Federal agents had found a complete and powerful wireless station in a cottage at Southeast Beach, a fairly popular summer resort. The cottage was seemingly untenanted, but some unexplained wires which ran along the rafters of an adjoining house led to the discovery of the auxiliary wireless station.
Experts had broken into the locked house and had found a cleverly concealed keyboard of a wireless apparatus. Further search had disclosed the whole thing, and, moreover, had brought out the fact, that the adjoining cottage was occupied by two apparently innocent old people, who were really in the employ of Sadie Kent.
“The Link” was a person of importance, and though she passed for a mere telegraph operator, she was one of the most important links in the German spy system in the United States.
In the room where the wireless apparatus was found there were also quantities of letter paper from the various hotels of New York City.
These sheets, abstracted from the writing-rooms of the hotels, were the code system used in forwarding the stolen intelligence.
It all hung together, and the bunch of those hotel papers found in Gately’s desk, and especially the fact that one reached his address the day after his demise proved, beyond all doubt, his implication in the despicable business.
Now, I thought, to what extent or in what way was Case Rivers concerned? Surely the man had been in Gately’s office on that fatal day. I had no idea that he had killed the banker,—that was only Zizi’s foolishness,—but he had certainly been there.
It came to me suddenly that if Rivers could be taken again to the Gately offices, the rooms, the associations, might possibly bring back his lost memory, and let him reinstate himself in his real personality. To be sure, this might prove him the murderer, but if so, it would be only the course of justice; and, on the other hand, if it explained his innocent or casual call on Gately that, too, was what the man deserved.