"Then," I said, "I may depend upon your help in my work." He promised it, and I asked him to find out for me first, if possible, what had become of the missing bills.
He smiled a little before he answered. "I am afraid I can find them all too easily for your purposes"; and then added, "come with me now if you have the time and I will show you how we sometimes accomplish our ends by playing a bluff game."
"Where are you going," I asked. He replied, "To Belle Stanton's for the missing bills," and hailing an uptown car, boarded it, I getting on after him.
Indeed, I thought, if this man's expectations prove true and he traces the money to that house, our first service will have proved of a kind Winters could better have dispensed with. Perhaps we would be unsuccessful, though, and then on the other hand we would have accomplished something worth while.
When we reached our destination, Miles rang the bell and the door was opened by the landlady herself. She evidently recognized us and looked none too agreeably surprised, but asked us into the big bare parlor, quite politely.
I took a seat, but the detective, declining her invitation, turned to her very quickly, and said:
"Mrs. Bunce, we find there were three fifty-dollar bills in the pocket of Mr. White's ulster when it was left here the night of his death and we need them, so I came around to ask you to get them for us."
"Do you mean to say," she answered in an indignant tone, "that you think I took them?"
"No," he said, "I know of course that you did not, but they were taken, or possibly lost, out of the pocket somewhere in this house, and I want to find them."
"They were neither lost nor taken in this house," she answered shortly, and my hopes rose as I began to feel more confident that Miles was mistaken. The detective, however, showed no signs of discouragement, but continued in the same urbane tone: