“I hope it is; but it’s only a chance. You come back here to-night and I’ll tell you. Besides, I want an excuse for seeing you again.”
“Darling,” said Ellery, and their conversation for the next few minutes can be left to the experienced imagination of the reader.
Chapter XXXI.
A Button in a Bag
As soon as Ellery had gone, Joan put on her things and walked across to the Cunningham Hotel, where she went straight upstairs to the rooms occupied by Carter Woodman and his wife. As she expected, there was no one at home. Woodman was at his office, and Marian Brooklyn and Mrs. Woodman were, she knew, away for the day. Joan locked the two doors opening on the corridor, and had the suite safely to herself.
It would have been awkward if any one had interrupted her, for what she did was to make a thorough search of the rooms, looking particularly at all the articles of male clothing and going very carefully through Carter Woodman’s own belongings. Her search was entirely unsuccessful, and, having replaced everything neatly so that no one would notice that it had been disturbed, she unlocked the doors and gave it up as a bad job.
“So much for that little idea,” she said to herself. “I could never really have hoped to find it there.”
But was that the end of her idea? As Joan finished her tidying up she began to hope that it was not. Carter Woodman had not been foolish enough to leave what she was looking for in his own rooms; but he must, she said to herself, have left it somewhere. Where then would he have left it? Where would she, if she wanted to get safely rid of a rather bulky object, so as never to hear of it again, be likely to leave it?
A station cloak-room at once occurred to her as a likely place; but the prospect of searching all the cloak-rooms of London was not alluring. Moreover, there were a dozen other places in which he might have disposed of a compromising object with almost equal safety. At the bottom of the river—a stone was all that was needed. In a pawnshop—of course after removing all marks that would serve to identify the article. In a cab, or any of a hundred other places, merely by leaving them behind. The cabman would hardly ask questions, if he found something of obvious value. To hunt for what Woodman had hidden seemed far more hopeless, far worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. It would need an army of men to do the searching. The police might be able to do that sort of thing. She and Ellery certainly could not.
Yet, if their theory was right, Woodman had almost certainly returned to the hotel after murdering George and Prinsep, bearing with him at least one very comprising piece of property. He could hardly have got rid of it—or them—safely the same evening. Most likely he would have done them up in a bag or parcel and gone out to dispose of them the next morning, on his way to his office. A bag was the more likely, for, as Woodman habitually carried one, it would attract less notice than a parcel. Assume that he had gone out with the things in a bag. Had he taken them to his office, or had he got rid of them on the way? Either might be the case, and it would not be easy to follow up the clue.
Then Joan had a sudden thought; swiftly she got up and again locked the doors. Among the things she had searched there had been a large hand-bag. She had looked into it, and found it empty. As the objects she was seeking were bulky she had not studied it very carefully; but it was Just possible that it might repay further inspection.