Curiously enough, however, he did not join the crowds upon the beach, but sought another bathing pavilion a quarter of a mile away—Helmstaedter's—where he was not known. There he repeated the process: went to the desk; obtained a twenty-five cent bathing-suit, but this time he deposited no valuables, having none that were visible. Then with his second bathing-suit he stepped into one of Helmstaedter's dressing-rooms, and again he undressed, stripping to the skin as before, and donning now the Helmstaedter bathing-suit, he opened the door, closed it behind him, and took his way to the beach.
And now, since Peter V. had gone to Brighton Beach for the ostensible purpose of bathing, Peter V. bathed. But strangely enough, though he had Helmstaedter's bathing-suit upon him, he did not bathe from Helmstaedter's; on the contrary, he strode up the beach and bathed at Obermeyer's. An expert swimmer, he was known to the life guard, who saw him and warned him with:
"Better look out, Mr. Wilkinson, two big men had cramps out there yesterday. I had the time of my life bringing them in."
"Never mind me," laughed Wilkinson, "there's no fear of my having cramps to-day." And with that he plunged boldly into the surf. When the life guard last saw him, Wilkinson was merely a speck far out upon the surface of the sunlit sea.
That evening, while all New York was looking for him, while Hawkins and Watson were being soundly rated by the District Attorney, while Flomerfelt and Mrs. Peter V. were laying new plans, while Leslie wept in the silence of her room, that evening one of the Obermeyer helpers making his rounds, discovered the clothes of Peter V. Wilkinson, the Trust Company man, in his booth. The clerk at the desk produced the banker's wallet containing hundreds of dollars, his pin and other valuables. But the bathing-suit, the brass checks, and Peter V. Wilkinson were nowhere to be found.
"Suicide," at once said the press; family and friends said "drowning accident," and the life guard backed them up. Furthermore, Hawkins produced the pistol and poisons taken from the trunks in Maine—evidences of suicidal intent. These strengthened and deepened the theory of suicide. Even Murgatroyd, after thinking it over, was satisfied that such was the case. As for Colonel Morehead, he would sit for hours in his office, staring at the wall, never coming to any conclusion. "Peter's certainly got me guessing," was the way he acknowledged his inability to solve the problem. Nor did the ocean ever give up Peter from its capacious depths.
Of all the men in New York County there was one, however, who had a theory. This man was tall, slender, handsome, a man in authority. After the county detectives had given up the search, and after the newspaper reporters had faded from the scene, this man quietly went down to Brighton Beach and interviewed the clerk.
"I wonder," he asked himself, as under his gruelling cross-examination the clerk searched the remotest confines of his memory, "I wonder what Wilkinson had in that brown paper bundle, and what became of it. Was it drowned, too?"
But of all the people down at Brighton Beach, only one man knew the movements of Peter V., and that was Peter V. himself. He had had his swim; he had gone far out, ducked and swam under water for a distance, and finally had gone ashore near Helmstaedter's pavilion—Helmstaedter's pavilion, where he belonged and where he was not known. Dripping, glowing from his bath, he had entered the pavilion with hundreds of bathers and gone at once to his booth.
The rest was simple. Having dried himself, he once more donned the dry, Obermeyer bathing-suit, drew on top of that his second-hand suit of clothes, smashed his soft hat down on his head, and left the pavilion by the street entrance. And pushing through the back streets and alleyways which were crowded with the cheaper order of pleasure-seekers, eating "hot-dogs," he darted into a barber-shop and leaned back in the chair with a grunt of satisfaction.