I did not require much persuasion. It was like dining in Fairyland! By tacit consent we avoided any reference to the case. I shall never forget that hour as long as I live. We were alone, for the unpleasant Mrs. Bleecker thinking that Miss Hamerton was dining out, had gone off to some friends of hers.
Afterwards I went home to disguise myself, and then proceeded to the theatre. I had already photographed the cryptogram, and put the negative in my safe. McArdle was lying in wait for me, and I allowed him to drag it out of me, that I had not been able to translate it. He collected the stakes in high glee.
The paper was passed from hand to hand until it literally fell to pieces. No one could make anything of it of course. I encouraged the talk and helped circulate the paper, and watched from behind my innocent pieces of window-glass for some one to betray himself. But I saw nothing. The conviction was forced on me that I had a mighty clever one to deal with.
During my long waits I loitered from dressing-room to dressing-room, and let them talk. As opportunities presented themselves I quietly searched for the first page of that letter, though I supposed it had been destroyed.
Eighteen actors and actresses and a working force of six comprised the field of my explorations. However, the fact that punctuation played a part in the cryptogram, not to speak of the choice of words, convinced me that both the writer and reader of it must be persons of a certain education, so I eliminated the illiterates. This reduced me at one stroke to five men and four women. Of these two of the men were obviously too silly and vain to have carried out such a nervy piece of work, while one of the women was a dear old lady who had been on the stage for half a century, and another was a bit of dandelion fluff. These exclusions left me with five, to wit: Roland Quarles, George Casanova, Kenton Milbourne, Beulah Maddox and Mary Gray.
Roland Quarles I have already mentioned. Both he and Casanova were actors of established reputations who had been in receipt of handsome salaries for some seasons. I scarcely considered them. Milbourne was my dark horse. He was a hatchet-faced individual, homely, uninteresting, unhealthy-looking. His fancy name sat on him strangely. He looked like a John Doe or a Joe Williams. Miss Maddox was a large woman of the gushing-hysterical type; Miss Gray a quiet well-bred girl who kept to herself.
While I concentrated on those named, I did not, however, overlook the doings of the others. With all the men I was soon on excellent terms but the women baffled me. Women naturally despise a man of the kind I made out to be. You can't win a woman's confidence without making love to her, and that was out of my line.
On Thursday night of the week after I joined, Miss Beauchamp, who played a maid's part, spoiled a scene of Miss Hamerton's by missing her cue. It was not the first offense, and she was fired on the spot. This girl was the bit of fluff I have mentioned. The occasion suggested an opportunity to me. There was no time to be lost so I went to Miss Hamerton at once. In my humble, shabby character I meekly bespoke the part for a "friend." Miss Hamerton was startled. She said she would consider it.
I had no sooner got home that night than she called me up to ask what I had meant. I did not want to argue with her over the telephone, so I asked her to see me next morning. She said she would come to my office as soon as she had breakfasted.
Using all my powers of persuasion it took me more than an hour to win her consent to my putting a woman operative in the vacant part. Not only did I have to have a woman in the company, I told her, but I needed an assistant outside. Not by working twenty-four hours a day could I track down all the clues that opened up. She would never have given in, I believe, had it not been for the mysterious comfort she had found in the cryptogram.