“Larry, I think there’s just one point you overlooked,” said Detective Bill Nyler earnestly.
“What?” asked Larry eagerly.
“Well, I’ll grant that you’re a better detective than lots that are in the business,” went on the headquarters man, “but you’ve still something to learn. Now, I read in the paper about how you played the brick end of it up, but you didn’t go quite far enough with it.”
“Why not?”
“Look here. It’s pretty certain, isn’t it, that the man who ‘switched’ the satchel full of money, for one with bricks in, prepared the dummy valise outside the bank?”
“Sure. That’s easy to guess.”
“Then where did he do it? Not at the corner of Broadway and Wall street, that’s sure. He’d pick out the most secluded place he could find, and that would be his own room.
“Now then, there are several fellows who work in the Consolidated Bank. Any one of them may have committed this robbery, and, again, it may have been done by some clever outsider, though I’m not strong on that theory. If it was a bank clerk he fixed that bag up in his room. A room is in a house—which, though it sounds like a lesson in the first reading book, isn’t so simple as it seems.
“What I mean is, that the thief wouldn’t go too far from his room in order to get the bricks. He’d pick out some place as near his house, and room, as possible.”
“Why?” asked Larry.