Bristow went into his bedroom, where Miss Martin gave him another dose of strychnine. He asked her to await his return—not that he expected to be in need of her, he said, but just to be on the safe side. He waved aside Braceway's solicitousness about his strength.
As they stepped into the corridor, a boy handed Braceway a telegram. He read it, and, without a word, handed it to Bristow. It said:
"Two diamonds and two emeralds, unset, apparently part of Withers jewelry, pawned here about two-thirty this afternoon by medium-sized man; a little slim; black moustache; high, straight nose; bushy eyebrows; very thin lips; gray eyes; age between thirty and forty; weight 140 pounds. Two pawnshops used. No trace of him yet."
It was signed by the chief of the Baltimore plain-clothes force.
"What do you think of that?" asked Braceway, his voice hard.
"This Morley," answered Bristow, his voice equally hard, "must have lost his mind."
They went down and took a cab.
"That description," the lame man was thinking, as they rolled through the streets toward the northwest part of the city, "fits Withers perfectly, except for the moustache and the colour of the eyes. But that's absurd. I'd like to——"
He began again to wonder what, in addition to the capture of the guilty man, had brought Braceway to Washington. With his highly sensitized brain, he had received the impression that there was joined to the case some event or interest of which he had not the slightest inkling. How was Morley hooked up with the hidden phase of the affair? He intended to know all they knew about the whole business.
If Morley knew the secret—there was Maria Fulton! Incredulous for a moment, he considered an entirely new idea. His incredulity vanished—and he knew!