“I satisfied myself early last night that he was doing nothing more than reading, and then I sat down to wait. In a little while I heard his door open, in response to a knock. I looked out and saw a messenger boy standing there with a telegram. Parloti was quite excited when he read it a little later, and I watched him pace up and down his room. Then I sat down to await developments, but I had a hole in my door, through which I could see when his opened.
“I felt that I had him safe, for I knew he couldn’t come out without me seeing him. His room has but one door, though he has a connecting bath, and a small dressing-room. But they can only be entered through his apartment.
“Well, after sitting there for a while, listening for his door to open, and taking occasional glances through the hole in my door, I thought I’d take another transom-look. I did, and I saw that he wasn’t there. I waited some time, and he did not come from either of the other rooms. Then I got suspicious.
“With a skeleton key I went in his apartment. He had left, and the open window at the fire-escape, and some marks in the dust on the iron platform, showed me plainly enough how he’d given us the slip. Of course I got busy at once, but I couldn’t get a trace of him. The fire-escape that he went down lands in a little alley, seldom used, and he could travel along that, after dark, and get out on the street without being seen. Oh, he fooled us all right!”
Larry said nothing for a few seconds after the detective finished his narrative. Then he asked:
“Did you look for that telegram?”
“I did, but I couldn’t find it. He must have taken it with him.”
“Couldn’t you get a copy of it at the office? You know, telegraph companies make a copy of every message that comes over the wires.”
“Yes, I know that, but this wasn’t a regular message. It must have been written by some of Parloti’s friends, who just stepped into a district messenger office and had it delivered by a boy. That is often done.”
“If we could only find that note!” exclaimed Larry, “it might give us a clew to the whole mystery.”