He then related the occurrences of the last two days; his meeting with Mary Sturtevant, his visit to Lucy, the call from Cahill and O'Connor, their theories and plans, the mystifying telephone calls, and finally the startling discovery of the notice in his humidor.
"And now," Forrester concluded, "I want your opinion on all these facts. Forget your natural animosity to the city detectives, Green, and consider their clues and theories in the light of cold reason."
Green shifted his chair so that he could rest his feet on the window sill, relighted his cigar which had gone out while Forrester talked, and smoked for a while in silence.
"Look here," he said, at length. "You remember my theory and arguments that these here 'Friends o' the Poor' lived near that tree?"
"Yes," replied Forrester, "and that newspaper fellow, Humphrey, had something of the same idea. I half agreed with both of you after my discoveries."
"All right," continued Green, "I'll bet you a week's pay them Italians out there on the West Side—miles away—are just plain auto bandits. They're pullin' some game o' their own, and most likely never even heard o' the 'Friends o' the Poor.' Them city dicks is coverin' up their poor work by misleadin' you. Get me?"
"But the telephone calls," protested Forrester. "Especially the man's voice with the foreign accent!"
"Bunk!" sneered Green. "Reporters, most likely, tryin' to get next to your plans. See here," he added, dropping his feet to the floor and shifting his chair to face Forrester, "I bet there's so many o' them reporter guys around that tree tonight that the 'Friends o' the Poor' can't get near it!"
"And that notice—unaccountably slipped into my cigar humidor while I sat in the library. How do you place that?"
"That's the only real thing that happened," maintained Green. "But it ain't any way mysterious, though they tried to scare you into thinkin' it was. Them guys just crawled through a window while you was out to dinner. It was there all the evenin'—only you didn't happen to want a cigar till late, that's all. Did you find any open or unlocked windows?"