Suraci ran his finger down the register page until he came to one name, where he stopped abruptly.
“Albert Addison, Baltimore, Maryland,” read Blaine. Then, with a sudden exclamation he bent closer over the paper. A prolonged scrutiny ensued while Suraci watched him curiously. Reaching into a drawer, the Master Detective drew out a powerful magnifying glass and examined each stroke of the pen with minute 136 care. At length he swung about in his chair and pressed the electric button on the corner of the desk. When his secretary appeared in response to the summons, Blaine said:
“Ask the filing clerk to look in the drawer marked ‘P. 1904,’ and bring me the check drawn on the First National Bank signed Paddington.”
While the secretary was fulfilling his task the two waited in silence, but with the check before him Henry Blaine gave it one keen, comparing glance, then turned to the operative.
“Well, Suraci, what did you learn from the hotel employees?”
“One of the bell-boys told me that this man, Addison, arrived with only a bag, announcing that his luggage would be along later and that he anticipated remaining a week or more. This boy noticed him particularly because he scanned the hotel register before writing his own name, and insisted upon having one of two special suites; number seventy-two or seventy-six. Seventy-four the suite between, was occupied by Mr. Lawton. They were both engaged, so he was forced to be content with number seventy-three, just across the hall. The boy noticed that although the new arrival did not approach Mr. Lawton or his daughter, he hung about in their immediate vicinity all day and appeared to be watching them furtively.
“Late in the afternoon, Mr. Lawton went into the writing-room to attend to some correspondence. The boy, passing through the room on an errand, saw him stop in the middle of a page, frown, and tearing the paper across, throw it in the waste-basket. Glancing about inadvertently, the bell-boy saw Addison seated near by, staring at Mr. Lawton from behind a newspaper 137 which he held in front of his face as if pretending to read. The boy’s curiosity was aroused by the eager, hungry, expectant look on the stranger’s face, and he made up his mind to hang around, too, and see what was doing.
“He attended to his errand and returned just in time to see Mr. Lawton seal the flap of his last envelope, rise, and stroll from the room. Instantly Addison slipped into the seat just vacated, wrote a page, crumpled it, and threw it in the same waste-basket the other man had used. Then he started another page, hesitated and finally stopped and began rummaging in the basket, as if searching for the paper he himself had just dropped there. The boy made up his mind––he’s a sharp one, sir, he’d be good for this business––that the stranger wasn’t after his own letter, at all, but the one Mr. Lawton had torn across, and in a spirit of mischief, he walked up to the man and offered to help.
“‘This is your letter, sir. I saw you crumple it up just now. That torn sheet of paper belongs to one of the other guests.’
“According to his story, he forced Addison’s own letter on him, and walked off with the waste-basket to empty it, and if looks could kill, he’d have been a dead boy after one glance from the stranger. That was all he had to tell, and he wouldn’t have remembered such a trifling incident for a matter of two years and more, if it hadn’t been for something which happened late that night. He didn’t see it, being off duty, but another boy did, and the next day they compared notes. They were undecided as to whether they should go to the manager of the hotel and make a report, or not, but being only kids, they were afraid of getting into trouble themselves, so they waited. Addison departed suddenly that 138 morning, however, and as Mr. Lawton never gave any sign of being aware of what had taken place, they kept silent. I located the second boy, and got his story at first hand. His name is Johnnie Bradley and he’s as stupid as the other one is sharp.