“Yes. They dragged it out of her a little at a time. Donovan wanted her to marry him. Yesterday he urged her to marry him and leave for the West at once. That sounded suspicious, Doctor. With so many now out of work, why should a man marry and at once throw up his job? To do this he’d have to have quite a bit of money—and Donovan didn’t have any. Or else he’d have to know how he could raise money very quickly. Get it?”
“Perfectly.”
“So we sent out the maid and brought in Donovan. He had a smug answer to the reason for that trip to the West. A friend owned a taxi company in a western city and wanted him to come on and take the job of manager.”
“He had this friend’s letter, of course?”
Harley Kent laughed. “You’re not as easily fooled as that, Doctor? Of course not. Said he had lost it. So the troopers took him away.”
“That’s that,” Dr. Stone said after a silence.
“Exactly. And a lucky thing the girl talked. Up to that point we had nothing. No finger prints, no sign as to how the window had been forced, no sign of the necklace. Nothing but an open window and an open safe. It was as though a bird had flown in and had flown off with the jewels.”
“A bird,” Dr. Stone said slowly, and tapped his cane against the floor. “Nobody thought of that seriously though?”
“A bird?” Harley Kent stared.
To Joe’s amazement, his uncle appeared in earnest. “Because if they had taken a bird seriously the next step——”