Here was food for reflection, plenty of it. What was Miss Diana Carswell doing in Brewster, which was as far apart from her world as if it had been the smallest village on an alien planet? Curiously Maxwell scanned the register for other names which might answer the query. There were none. Miss Carswell was alone, or at least she was not accompanied by any other New Yorkers. It was another mystery, and the ex-superintendent was growing sensitive in his mystery nerve. Possibly Sprague——
Sprague came in a few minutes before one o’clock, and there was a grim set to his big jaw that Maxwell had seen there more than once on the foot-ball field when the game was desperate.
“We’ll eat first,” was the incomer’s crisp dictum. “Shall we go in now?”
Together they went to the café, taking their accustomed table in the far corner of the many-pillared room. At the serving of the bouillon, Maxwell broke out.
“Up to a certain point, Calvin, I can blunder along in the dark with my eyes shut, and do it more or less cheerfully. But past that point——”
“I know; it has been rather hard on you, Dick. But the suspense is nearly over. At two o’clock we are due in Judge Walsh’s chambers in the Federal Building, and you will then learn all you need to know—and possibly a good bit more. You’ll have to forgive me for fogging you up as I went along. I guess that is part of the detective slant in me; to want to go my own way, and to go it alone. The minute I begin to talk over the reasoning process with somebody else I begin to lose the keen sense of values. Writer people have told me that the same thing is true of plotting and novelling.”
Maxwell smiled grimly. “Speaking of novel plots, I hit upon the start for a good one this forenoon—just after you went away. I was glancing over the hotel register and I saw a name there that was full of all sorts of mysteries and plotting suggestions.”
“Whose name?” queried the expert.
“I’m going to devil you for a while now, and let you find out for yourself,” laughed the railroad man. “I don’t know the owner of the name, and I don’t suppose you do; but I’ll bet a piebald pinto worth fifty dollars that, when you see what I saw, you’ll sit up and take notice and do a little stunt of wondering that will make mine look like a cheap imitation.”
The big man grinned good-naturedly.