“You are convinced, of course, that Sullivan did it?”
“Who else?” He looked over his glasses at me with the air of a man whose mental attitude is unassailable. “Well, listen to this,” I said.
Then I told him at length of my encounter with Bronson in the restaurant, of the bargain proposed by Mrs. Conway, and finally of McKnight’s new theory. But, although he was impressed, he was far from convinced.
“It’s a very vivid piece of imagination,” he said drily; “but while it fits the evidence as far as it goes, it doesn’t go far enough. How about the stains in lower seven, the dirk, and the wallet? Haven’t we even got motive in that telegram from Bronson?”
“Yes,” I admitted, “but that bit of chain—”
“Pooh,” he said shortly. “Perhaps, like yourself, Sullivan wore glasses with a chain. Our not finding them does not prove they did not exist.”
And there I made an error; half confidences are always mistakes. I could not tell of the broken chain in Alison West’s gold purse.
It was one o’clock when Hotchkiss finally left. We had by that time arranged a definite course of action—Hotchkiss to search Sullivan’s rooms and if possible find evidence to have him held for larceny, while I went to Cresson.
Strangely enough, however, when I entered the train the following morning, Hotchkiss was already there. He had bought a new note-book, and was sharpening a fresh pencil.
“I changed my plans, you see,” he said, bustling his newspaper aside for me. “It is no discredit to your intelligence, Mr. Blakeley, but you lack the professional eye, the analytical mind. You legal gentlemen call a spade a spade, although it may be a shovel.”