“I could probably go to an early show with you after dinner. I’m not sure, so don’t stay in Philadelphia just on account of that. I mean, if you want to start back home.”
“I’m going to start home at daylight tomorrow, morning,” replied the young man. “So I’ll surely be around tonight. At Stoddard House soon after seven.”
“All right, I’ll see you then. And thanks for a lovely lunch, Max. It’s been wonderful.”
The young man departed, and Mary Louise hunted a desk in one of the smaller rooms of the Bellevue—set aside for writing. She placed a sheet of paper in front of her and took up a pen, as if she were writing a letter. But what she really wanted to do was to think.
“I was wrong twice,” she reasoned. “First in suspecting Miss Stoddard, then in believing Miss Weinberger guilty. I’ll go more carefully this time.
“If my very first guess was right—that the transient guests were stealing the valuables from Stoddard House—I must begin all over again. Mrs. Hilliard said there were two girls staying at the hotel for a day or so when the silverware and the vase were stolen.... Are these girls in league with Mary Green and Pauline Brooks? Are they all members of a secret band of thieves? That’s the first question I have to answer.”
She frowned and opened her notebook. Why hadn’t she gotten the names of those girls from Mrs. Hilliard’s old register?
The second crime—the stealing of the watches—she could pin on Mary Green, alias “Blondie Jackson.”
Now for the last three robberies. They had all taken place while Pauline Brooks was at Stoddard House!
Mary Louise considered them separately. Pauline could have stolen Miss Granger’s money and her picture, but it was a man who entered Mary Louise’s bedroom on Friday night and who took her watch and her money. Was one of those young men whom Pauline was dining with today an accomplice? If so, how did he escape from the hotel? Out of Pauline’s window?