"Hunt around for a few more clues before turning it over to the police." There was a tired disappointment in the journalist's voice that Lars Larssen noted with keen satisfaction. "I doubt if the police'll do much unless the relations kick up a shindy. Paris is the finest place in Europe to get murdered in peacefully and without a lot of silly fuss. You see, it might be a hoax. Your Parisian hoaxer likes a dash of Grand Guignol horrors in his jokelet. The police have been had several times, and they're very much hoax-shy. I could tell you some pretty tales about mysterious disappearances that never get into the papers."
A little later the journalist took his departure. As the great shipowner shook hands at the door, he said cordially: "If you want news from me when I'm in Paris any time, come straight to me. I like your paper; I like your methods."
Martin left without a suspicion that he had been "pumped" for vital information.
Now the shipowner had to wait patiently for nightfall before the first definite move of his game could be played. One of his secrets of success was that he never allowed his mind to worry him. He shut the matter completely out of his conscious thoughts; got a trunk telephone call to his London office; sent off some cables to his New York office; and generally immersed himself on business matters quite unrelated to the Matheson case.
It was nearly ten o'clock that night before Arthur Dean returned from an errand on which he had been sent. In his arms was a bulky brown-paper parcel.
He opened it in the privacy of his employer's sitting-room, and remembering the advice given him that morning as to the way to present a business report, pointed silently to a small slit in the side of the fur-lined coat, where it would cover a man's ribs. On the inner lining of the coat there was a dark stain around the slit, though the immersion in the river had of course washed away any definite blood-clot.
Lars Larssen nodded appreciation of the young fellow's method of going straight to the heart of the subject. "Good!" said he. "Now for details."
"I carried out your orders exactly, sir. Took a cab to Neuilly, dismissed it, put on the pair of workman's boots when I was in the darkness of the river bank, and found the coat and stick just where Martin and I had hidden them in the bushes. The trees make it quite dark along that part of the Seine, and I am certain no one saw me taking them and wrapping them in my brown paper. The coat was nearly dry."
"Did you find the stick broken?"
"No. I broke it in two so that it could be wrapped in the same parcel as the coat."