“It might,” agreed the officer, “but it’s gone.”
“How do you know?”
“Because, over the transom I saw Parloti tear it up, and put the pieces in his pocket. He took it away with him. He isn’t such a dunce as to risk leaving evidence like that behind.”
“I suppose not,” said Larry, “especially as it was probably a message telling him to skip. If we only had it! I wonder if, by any possible chance, he could have dropped pieces of it when he went down the fire-escape? It was pretty windy last night, and some of the scraps might have blown out of his pocket, especially in going down a fire-escape ladder.”
“Well, it’s worth looking into,” assented Detective Nyler. “Here, you’re younger than I am, Larry, climb down the escape, and look about on the ground. You may find something.”
It did not take the young reporter long to do this. But his careful search was not rewarded by so much as a fragment of paper that was of any service. He did find a receipted hotel bill that Parloti had evidently dropped from the window, or that had fallen from his pocket, but this was all. There were no pieces of a torn note to help solve the riddle.
Larry climbed up the fire-escape to the room again. Then he and the detective went carefully over the apartment. It was evident that Parloti had left in haste, for his clothing was scattered about, showing that he had hurriedly packed some and left the rest behind.
“What sort of a coat did he have on when he tore up the note and put the pieces in the pocket?” asked the young reporter, as he looked into a closet containing several suits that the Italian had left.
“Well, it was what some people call a smoking jacket, though I never could understand why a man couldn’t smoke just as well in an ordinary coat as in one of those fancy ones. It was a smoking jacket, and——”
The detective stopped suddenly, for Larry was taking from a closet the very jacket in question. The young reporter held the garment up in one hand, and, with the other, he began exploring the pockets on either side.