“But the soap man’s name is Posselwait,” I said, bewildered.
“It’s no trick,” said Scoop, “for a man engaged in crooked work, as this man is, to change his name.”
“You think his real name is Matson?”
“It isn’t impossible. Certainly he looks enough like the dead puzzle maker to be his brother.”
“Why do you call the murdered man a puzzle maker?” Tom spoke up.
“Because,” informed Scoop, “puzzle making was his hobby. A queer old duck, he liked to stump people with original conundrums and puzzles. He was smart about it, too. Just before he was murdered he made a ten-ring wire puzzle that no one could solve but himself. Pa tried it. So did Jerry’s pa and half of the men in our town. It was some puzzle, I want to tell you! After the old man had been murdered, people tried to find the ten-ring puzzle. But it had disappeared along with the old man’s money. And it hasn’t been seen or heard of to this day.”
“Maybe,” said Tom, using his thinker, “the puzzle had something to do with the murder.”
Scoop stared, his jaw sagging. [[56]]
“Why!… No one ever thought of that!”
“Queer,” I spoke up, still bewildered, “that the murdered man’s brother should be a spy of the Chicago manufacturer’s. Maybe we’re mixed up on that point.”