"There was," said Mathison, in an odd voice.
"Huh? Spirits? You don't look like a man who would waste any time with the ouija-board. Well, here's for the shoe-strings and the punch."
When the clerk received the order he made the sender repeat it.
"Shoe-strings!" he yelled.
"What now?" demanded the house detective, surlily.
"Murphy wants two pairs of shoe-strings and a leather-punch! I tell you, the whole house has gone bug. You run up. Murphy's been hypnotized or he has had a punch of dope. Here, boy; run down to the Macedonian shoeblack and get two pairs of shoe-strings and a punch. Hustle!"
"Shoe-strings!" Michaels the house detective ran for the elevator. But when he reached room 320 he was told emphatically—through the door—to take his bonehead down-stairs again. "Cahoots!" he murmured. And all the rest of his life he was going to hold to the belief that Ellison and Murphy had divided up the loot.
At eleven o'clock Mathison and Detective Murphy came down into the lobby. Murphy carried the parrot-cage. There was a grin on his face as he left the elevator, but it vanished as he neared the desk.
"My bill," said Mathison. He had decided to return to the train.