“For the coming issue of the Milk-Dealers’ Journal,” explained its author. “Now, Mr. Kirby, I want you to find out for me—Mrs. Hale can help you, since she has known the hotel people for years—the names of all those who gave up rooms on this floor, or the floors above or below, yesterday morning, and ask whether they are known to the hotel people.”
“You think the thief is still in the hotel?” cried Mrs. Hale.
“Hardly. But I think I see smoke from your blue fires. To make out the figure through the smoke is not—” Average Jones broke off, shaking his head. He was still shaking his head when he left the hotel.
It took three days for the milk-journal advertisement to work. On the afternoon of August tenth, a lank, husky-voiced teamster called at the office of the Ad-Visor and was passed in ahead of the waiting line.
“I’m after that twenty,” he declared.
“Earn it,” said Average Jones with equal brevity.
“Hotel Denton. Guy on the third floor balcony—”
“Right so far.”
“Leanin’ on the rail as if he was sick. I give him a hello. ‘Takin’ a nip of night air, Bill?’ I says. He didn’t say nothin’.”
“Did he do anything?”