“It certainly would!” was the answer.
“Well, then,” Ben continued, “I want you to find out at the earliest possible moment whether the coat and hat are hidden in that apartment.”
“They might have been thrown out of the window!” suggested Jimmie.
“Hardly,” Mr. Havens suggested. “Colleton had an inside room. Anything thrown out of his window would land on the skylight which arches over the mail division on the ground floor. The coat and hat would have been discovered within five minutes, and even if they chanced to be overlooked during that day, they would have been discovered by the sweepers the next morning.”
“That’s just what I wanted to know!” Ben laughed.
“Now, if the garments are not in the room, they must have been carried away!” Jimmie cut in. “Perhaps the villain put them under his clothes. That’s an old trick with criminals.”
“Just one more question,” Ben began as Mr. Havens nodded for him to proceed. “How did the villain get the papers out of the locked drawer of the desk and the closed safe?”
“That’s another mystery,” Mr. Havens continued.
“Don’t you think he buffaloed Colleton after he drugged him and forced him to open the safe and the desk and take the papers out?”
“That is very probable,” was the reply.