The great city turned again to its usual avocations. The unfathomable mystery was dismissed from the public mind.
Meantime Transome Kent was on the trail. Sleepless, almost foodless, and absolutely drinkless, he was everywhere. He was looking for Peter Kelly. Wherever crowds were gathered, the Investigator was there, searching for Kelly. In the great concourse of the Grand Central Station, Kent moved to and fro, peering into everybody's face. An official touched him on the shoulder. "Stop peering into the people's faces," he said. "I am unravelling a mystery," Kent answered. "I beg your pardon, sir," said the man, "I didn't know."
Kent was here, and everywhere, moving ceaselessly, pro and con, watching for Kelly. For hours he stood beside the soda-water fountains examining every drinker as he drank. For three days he sat on the steps of Masterman Throgton's home, disguised as a plumber waiting for a wrench.
But still no trace of Peter Kelly. Young Kelly, it appeared, had lived with his uncle until a little less than three years ago. Then suddenly he had disappeared. He had vanished, as a brilliant writer for the New York Press framed it, as if the earth had swallowed him up.
Transome Kent, however, was not a man to be baffled by initial defeat.
A week later, the Investigator called in at the office of Inspector Edwards.
"Inspector," he said, "I must have some more clues. Take me again to the Kelly residence. I must re-analyse my first diæresis."
Together the two friends went to the house. "It is inevitable," said Kent, as they entered again the fateful billiard-room, "that we have overlooked something."
"We always do," said Edwards gloomily.
"Now tell me," said Kent, as they stood beside the billiard table, "what is your own theory, the police theory, of this murder? Give me your first theory first, and then go on with the others."