They might have at least arrested me; but they didn’t even do that. They did detail an officer to accompany me; but he felt himself distinctly as one charged to keep me from further harm. They rushed a squad over to Number 120 Cheron Street, of course, and surrounded the house properly before closing in. But nobody, not even the old woman, was there. The house was empty and so eminently proper to all appearances that, for a while, a theory prevailed that I had invented my whole story.
Then they began hearing from Dibley and confirmed the first part; about two days later, there was plenty of proof of the rest. The prints from those missing Janvier plates began making their début at the banks all over New York; Philadelphia reported a few; soon Boston was heard from.
They were so good that some of the experts at the banks wired Washington for a check on serial numbers before throwing Janvier’s work out. Naturally, all this made me popular.
I didn’t care about returning home; I didn’t drop into our New York office. I stayed in my room, mostly, where old “Iron Age” Dibley, among others, visited me.
He informed me that Doris and George and Felice all completed their get-away at Cleveland; and he didn’t feel himself in the least to blame for that. No; he’d shifted any chagrin, which he might have felt, right on to me. Doris undoubtedly had come on afterwards, counting upon my chronic fatuity to respond to feeding by her telegrams; undoubtedly—to Dibley’s mind—she personally arranged the medulla oblongata performance for me.
Of course, I’d felt that; but when old “Iron Age” got gloating over it, he cheered me into a question or two. Had she? Was I sure?
Well, I’d certainly indicated to the police that I was; and no one developed any further ideas upon the subject. Number 120 Cheron Street was deserted of Doris and her crowd as the Flamingo Feather after the ball. The issue of those new Janvier tens and hundreds seemed to shift to the south; Atlanta reported rather more than its share; Nashville and Memphis broke into the column of complaints and New Orleans was not overlooked.
I was about convinced that my friends of the Flamingo and Cheron Street had shifted base again when I received, through the mails at the hotel, a note in Jerry’s handwriting.
“Steve: Here’s your chance,” I read. “Get to T. M. Teverson at once and talk to him; or Sencort. Prevent any meeting in Sencort Directors’ room. Make this absolutely sure. Examine pipe, particularly. J.”
Jerry’s writing and his manner with me, beyond doubt. He was still alive then and, if that postmark meant anything, he was in New York City at ten o’clock last night.