"Well, old chap, if I had as little trouble getting up here and down again as you do I wouldn't mind the job," the workman remarked cheerfully.
The pigeon cooed an answer. The steel worker extended a caressing hand, whereupon the bird rose swiftly, surely, with white wings widely stretched, circled once over the vast steel structure, then darted away to the north. The workman watched the snow-white speck until it was lost against the blue sky, then returned to his labors.
Some ten minutes later Mr. E. van Cortlandt Wynne, sitting at a desk in his Thirty-seventh Street house, was aroused from his meditations by the gentle tinkle of a bell. He glanced up, arose, and went up the three flights of stairs to the roof. Half a dozen birds rose and fluttered around him as he opened the trap; one door in their cote at the rear of the building was closed. Mr. Wynne opened this door, reached in and detached a strip of tissue paper from the leg of a snow-white pigeon. He unfolded it eagerly; on it was written: Safe. I love you. D.
CHAPTER VIII
SOME CONJECTURES
Mr. Gustave Schultze dropped in to see Mr. Latham after luncheon, and listened with puckered brows to a recital of the substance of the detective's preliminary report, made the afternoon before.
"Mr. Birnes left here rather abruptly," Mr. Latham explained in conclusion, "saying he would see me again, either last night or to-day. He has not appeared yet, and it may be that when he comes he will be able to add materially to what we now know."
The huge German sat for a time with vacant eyes.
"Der gread question, Laadham," he observed at last, gravely, "iss vere does Vynne ged dem."
"I know that—I know it," said Mr. Latham impatiently. "That is the very question we are trying to solve."