"I understand, sir. Here are the keys."
Farland reached the vacant apartment without being seen. The Gilberts were up now and eating breakfast. He could hear Kate Gilbert trying to cheer her father, but not a word she said had anything to do with Sidney Prale, or Rufus Shepley, or anybody connected in any way with the Shepley murder case.
"Now you must let Marie take you to the Park, father," he heard the girl say. "It is a splendid day, and you must get a lot of fresh air. You can go down and watch the animals. I'm going out now, but I'll be back some time during the afternoon, and then we'll talk about things."
Jim Farland waited in the vacant apartment until he heard Kate Gilbert depart. A quarter of an hour later, he opened the front door a crack and saw the gigantic Marie wheel out the chair with Mr. Gilbert in it. They went down in the elevator.
Farland waited for another quarter of an hour, until the old janitor came up and told that he had watched the maid wheel Mr. Gilbert into the Park.
"I'll just leave the elevator up here until somebody rings," the old janitor said, "and I'll watch the floor below from the top of the stairs. Then, if any of them come back, I'll tell you so you can get out."
He took his station at the head of the stairs, leaving the elevator door open so that the contrivance could not be operated from below. Jim Farland unlocked the door of the Gilbert apartment and stepped inside.
The first glance told him that it was an ordinary apartment furnished in quite an ordinary manner. It certainly did not look like a home of wealth, and Sidney Prale had said that it had been understood in Honduras that Kate Gilbert was of a rich family and traveling for her health.
Many tourists claim to have money when they are away from home, of course, but the part about traveling for her health seemed to Jim Farland to be going a bit too far. Would such a woman be traveling for her health and leave behind her at home an old father who was an invalid?
"There's something behind that little trip of hers," Farland told himself. "It looks to me as if she had gone down to Honduras to look up Sid Prale for some reason. And Honduras isn't exactly on the health-trip list, either."