He whistled softly. “That’s unfortunate,” he said. “Then the other person, whoever he is, knows what we know!”
He was considerably startled when I told him I had been shadowed, and insisted that it referred directly to the case in hand. “He’s got your notes,” he said, “and he’s got to know what your next move is going to be.”
His intention, I found, was to examine the carpet outside of the dressing-room door, and the floor beneath it, to discover if possible whether Arthur Wells had fallen there and been moved.
“Because I think you are right,” he said. “He wouldn’t have been likely to shoot himself in a hall, and because the very moving of the body would be in itself suspicious. Then I want to look at the curtains. ‘The curtains would have been safer.’ Safer for what? For the bag with the letters, probably, for she followed that with the talk about Hawkins. He’d got them, and somebody was afraid he had.”
“Just where does Hawkins come in, Sperry?” I asked.
“I’m damned if I know,” he reflected. “We may learn tonight.”
The Wells house was dark and forbidding. We walked past it once, as an officer was making his rounds in leisurely fashion, swinging his night-stick in circles. But on our return the street was empty, and we turned in at the side entry.
I led the way with comparative familiarity. It was, you will remember, my third similar excursion. With Sperry behind me I felt confident.
“In case the door is locked, I have a few skeleton keys,” said Sperry.
We had reached the end of the narrow passage, and emerged into the square of brick and grass that lay behind the house. While the night was clear, the place lay in comparative darkness. Sperry stumbled over something, and muttered to himself.