"And that's where I got that skin," he said, as we rose and sauntered into the living-room.
I gazed at the great rug spread out before the fireplace, and pictured to myself how it had looked the day McKelvie shot it when he spoke again.
"I'm afraid we'll have to smoke our cigars on the way. It's getting late."
With a sigh I returned to the business in hand, and as I drove through the poorer sections of New York on my way to Water Street my mind reverted to the first time I had visited that locality, which brought me around to Dick and the signet ring. So Dick had been in the Darwin home that night, and since his ring was in the secret room, then he must have been behind the safe at some time during the evening. McKelvie claimed that the criminal was hiding in the safe when Orton entered the room at eleven-thirty, but he also maintained that the criminal was the man we had heard when we ourselves had been in the study this very evening. If that were the truth then it could hardly have been Dick, since Dick was dead. Yet what did McKelvie hope to learn by visiting the scene of the suicide?
When we reached Water Street we pulled up before the lodging house where Dick had stayed and rang the bell. Mrs. Blake opened the door and eyed us suspiciously.
"No lodgings," she said uncompromisingly, beginning to close the door.
"Just a moment. We don't want lodgings," said McKelvie crisply, at the same time displaying a bill as he held his hand toward the lighted doorway. "We want you to answer a few questions."
Seeing that we were not of the class to which she was accustomed, and her suspicions allayed by the greenback, she wiped her hands on her apron and asked us in.
We went as far as the hallway, which was more ill-smelling than when I had first made its acquaintance, and paused near the shabby old staircase.
"On the tenth of October a lodger of yours committed suicide by drowning," said McKelvie abruptly. "Is this the man?"