“If I wanted to,” continued Jimmie, “I could tell you that the man at Washington wired that the safe in Colleton’s office had at last been opened by an expert. I could also tell you that he admitted that the coat and hat of the post-office inspector were found in the safe. I could also tell you that there began to be a faint suspicion in Washington that Colleton had walked out of his office with the man in brown and had been carried out of the city in the private stateroom of a Pullman-car. But look here,” the boy continued with a very annoying grin, “you’ve been making so much fun of my dream-book lately that I’m not going to tell you a thing about it!”
“Is that the correct story, Mr. DuBois?” asked Havens.
“That comes very near to being the correct story, don’t you know!” the Englishman replied.
“Is it?” demanded Jimmie, fairly dancing up and down.
“That’s the story they told,” Ben admitted.
“Say,” Jimmie shouted, “when I get back to New York, I’m going to open an office for the purpose of disclosing the future, and I’m going to write a new dream-book, and guarantee all the dreams on an extra payment of five dollars per!”
“Look here, kid,” demanded Ben, “how the dickens did you ever dream this all out?”
“No dream about it!” argued Jimmie. “Colleton had to get out of his room, and he couldn’t go up through the ceiling or down through the floor. He had to pass out of the door. Anybody with the sense of geese ought to know that the two men seen in the corridor had just passed out of Colleton’s room. It’s the only solution there is to the mystery!”
“Oh, it all looks easy now as soon as we get as far as the hindsight!” said Ben.
“Well,” Jimmie laughed, “I’ve done a lot of guessing in this case, and I’m glad I guessed one proposition correctly. I was just certain that Colleton’s clothing would be found in the safe, but still I was a little leary when Ben came back with his story that he had been using the wire. You see, I understood without his saying so that he’d been talking with Washington.”