McGinity, after some hesitation, agreed to this, and after remaining silent for a few minutes, he said: "You have, of course, no idea who this perpetrator might be?"
"No idea whatever," I promptly replied.
The thing to do, we decided after some further discussion, was to keep everything to ourselves, while we combed out things that might give us a further clue. Above all, neither Henry, nor Olinski, were to know anything whatever about our mistrust.
Meantime, McGinity was to acquaint the editorial executives of his paper with our suspicions, and to ease up on his sensational stories about Mars. On this subject, I felt pretty much at a loss at to what to suggest, but McGinity seemed to know his business. Before we parted for the night, he convinced me that slowing up on a newspaper story, removing it from the front page, reducing it to a few paragraphs, and finally dropping it altogether, was a much easier thing to do than most folk imagine. Besides, he said, the public forgets so easily and quickly.
It was in my mind to make a good start in the morning. I felt sure that the Royal Parchment Paper Company could tell me something that might be of great importance in guiding us to the solution of one of the most devilishly contrived plots I've ever known of.
All that the reporter and I had discussed was passing through my mind, after I had said good-night to him, and was heading down the hall to my own apartment. It was long after midnight. The castle was in darkness, and as quiet as a tomb. But just as I was about to enter my door, Pat came running down the hall, after me. Nearly breathless, she panted out her message. Would I go back to her room, at once? We hurried back, to find Jane there, all in a tremble, and her face showing ashen.
"It's that dreadful thing again," Jane exclaimed. She gave a little shudder, and turned away to get her smelling salts.
"What's up?" I asked. "Everything about the castle seems perfectly normal."
"But they're not," Pat said, miserably. "If you hadn't slept so soundly last night, you might have heard Mr. Zzyx, as I did, sneaking along the hall. Auntie wouldn't believe it when I told her. She said it was impossible for him to get out of his locked room without Niki knowing it."
"Now, dear Pat," I said reassuringly; "haven't you been having another nightmare? I'm positive that Mr. Zzyx was locked in his room, and asleep, at this hour last night, as he is now, tonight—tired out, like all of us, after a very exacting night at the banquet."