“I don’t get it.” Keats worried his thumbnail. “This doesn’t fit in with what you figured out, Queen. It couldn’t.”
Ellery frowned. “Laurel, Mac. Do these mean anything to you?” Laurel shook her head, staring at a name on the certificate she had picked up. Now she put it down, slowly, and turned away.
“Why, this must represent a fortune,” exclaimed Crowe. “Some warning!”
Ellery was looking at Laurel. “We’d better have a breakdown on the contents of this box, Keats, and then we can decide how to handle it. ― Laurel, what’s the matter?”
“Where you going?” demanded Macgowan.
Laurel turned at the door. “I’m sick of this. I’m sick of the whole thing, the waiting and looking and finding and doing absolutely nothing. If you and the lieutenant have anything, Ellery, what is it?”
“We’re not through making a certain investigation, Laurel.”
“Will you ever be?” She said it drearily. Then she went out, and a moment later they heard the Austin scramble away.
About seven o’clock that evening Ellery and Keats drove up to the Priam house in Keats’s car, Ellery carrying the box of stock certificates. Crowe Macgowan was waiting for them at the front door.
“Where’s Laurel, Mac? Didn’t you get my phone message?” said Ellery.