“Oh, no, no,” she answered quickly, but her eyes involuntarily swept first to the closet and then to Lanagan’s face as though in secret, anxious questioning. “Why, it makes me shiver even to think such a thing could have happened,” she added, and she unmistakably shivered a little.
There was more conversation, and Lanagan fell to examining the room. He first examined the closet. Then he opened the window and scrutinised the sill for a long time. He got down on his knees and peered beneath the heat radiator of coiled pipes. He lit a match, the space between the bottom of the radiator and the floor being so slight that he could not examine it as closely as he seemed to want to.
“Expect your man to get into the room through that?” asked the Public Administrator with heavy facetiousness.
“Oh, no,” replied Lanagan smoothly; “it’s just possible he got out of the room through it, though,” and continued with his minute examination.
The stenographer, Grace Northrup by name, although assisting the other two sorting out papers, found time each moment to flash a quick glance at Lanagan. Whether it was merely active feminine curiosity I could not determine. As for me, I had been over the room half a dozen times already. It held nothing further for me; but I never could even guess at the clues Lanagan might turn up on a trail that a dozen men had tramped over, so I remained to see him work with keen interest. When Lanagan had finished we left.
“Now, Norrie, my boy, to the Bush Street office of the telephone company,” he said with as much enthusiasm as I ever saw him exhibit. “You are a fine old blunderbuss for fair! But the others aren’t any better. Plain as the nose on your face! Lord, Lord!” He stopped and looked at me, laughing immoderately. I was inclined to be a trifle sulky; he made me feel like a six-dollar cub.
“Only,” he continued, “it’s a three days’ trail that I have taken up, and that dirk wielder has got just that much of a start—always assuming, for the sake of the argument, that it was not Stromberg.”
I didn’t ask him what he was going to the telephone office for; it came to me with a sting that I had heard that same bit of information about the telephoning dropped during the last two or three days, and, in the press of clues that I considered more important, had dismissed it. Which was the difference between Jack Lanagan and the rest of us; he had that intuitive faculty of eliminating the superfluous and driving at the main fact. It is, after all, a faculty found in all successful men of whatever occupation.
We both knew Lamb, traffic manager of the ’phone company. Lanagan asked for permission to talk with the girl who on Monday night handled the board having Bush 1243—Monteagle’s number. Lamb was a substantial chap, and promised to keep our visit in confidence. It was just before 4 o’clock, and the 4 to 10 shift of girls was coming on. In a few moments a young girl of sensible, pleasant demeanour was shown to the room, and Lamb retired after requesting that she give us all the information she might have on whatever subjects we discussed.
“You will be performing a service that will be appreciated,” said Lanagan, “if you could recall whether on Monday evening, along about 8 o’clock, you had several calls for Bush 1243?”