“I said it was a woman!” exclaimed Norah.
“Well, maybe,—maybe. Anyhow the check was drawn after the ones made out to Smith and the Driggs woman. So, the payee of that last check was in here later than the other two.”
“Who was she?” was Norah’s not unnatural inquiry.
But Hudson merely looked at her, with a slight smile that she should expect an answer to that question.
“Oh, all right,” she retorted; “I see her hatpin is still here.”
“If that there hatpin is a clew, you’re welcome to it. We don’t think it is. Mr. Gately had frequent lady callers, as any man’s got a right to have, but because they leaves their hatpins here, that don’t make ’em murderers. No, I argue that if a woman shot Mr. Gately she would be cute enough not to leave her hatpin by way of a visitin’ card.”
This raised Hudson’s mentality in my opinion, and I could see it also scored with Norah.
“That’s true,” she generously agreed. “In books, as soon as I come to the dropped handkerchief or broken cuff-link, I know that isn’t the property of the criminal. But, all the same, people do leave clews,—why, Sherlock Holmes says a person can’t enter and leave a room without his presence there being discoverable.”
“Poppycock,” said Hudson, briefly, and resumed his cogitation.
He was sitting at ease in Mr. Gately’s desk-chair, but I could see the man was thinking deeply, and as he had material for thought that he wasn’t willing to share with us, I returned to my own searching.