“Oh, boy! Is it? I’ll say so! Let’s see it!” He grasped the book affectionately.
“We are still hoping to find your money, too,” added Mr. Gay. But the man was hardly listening; his stamps meant far more to him than his roll of bills.
“Whom do I thank for this?” he inquired finally, as he opened the door.
“My daughter,” returned Mr. Gay. “But she isn’t here, and I’ll have to tell you the story some other time.”
During their supper together, Mr. Gay told the hotel detective about Mary Louise and the discoveries she had made which led her to suspect Mrs. Ferguson and Pauline Brooks. He brought the list out of his pocket and crossed off the articles that had been recovered: the gold-mesh bag and the two pearl rings.
“Except for the money which was stolen here last night, we probably shan’t find anything else in the rooms,” he concluded. “Mrs. Ferguson has no doubt hidden or disposed of everything which her gang stole from Stoddard House.”
Nevertheless, the two men resumed their search after dinner. Deeply hidden in the artificial grass which filled the Christmas-tree box, they found four hundred dollars—the exact amount which had been taken from the Hotel Ritz in Philadelphia and the Hotel Phillips there in Baltimore. But two hours’ more searching revealed nothing else. At ten o’clock the two men decided to quit.
Mr. Gay went directly to his room and called Stoddard House on the telephone, asking to speak to Mary Louise.
To his surprise it was Mrs. Hilliard who answered him.
“Mary Louise did not come home for supper,” she said. “I concluded that she had gone to Baltimore with you, Mr. Gay.”