“Donald, what are you getting at? You mean they’re concealed in some other room?”
“Perhaps,” I said, “but as I size up Ringold’s character, I don’t think he was that big a sucker.”
“What did he do with them then?”
I said, “We’ll find out.”
I drove to the post office, walked in to the window which had Q to Z over the wicket, and said, “Jack Waterbury, please.”
A bored clerk with a rubber finger stall thumbed through a pile of envelopes and handed me one addressed to Jack Waterbury, General Delivery.
I handed it to Alta as soon as I got in the car. “Take a look at this,” I said, “and see if it’s what you want.”
She ripped open the corner of the envelope and looked inside. Her face told me, the answer.
“Donald, how did you know?”
“There was only one place he could have put those letters — down the mail chute. He had them with him when he was in the room with you. A few minutes later, when he was shot, he didn’t have them. The murderer didn’t get them. Crumweather didn’t get them. Esther Clarde doesn’t know where they are — there was only one place for them to go — down the mail chute.