"That's it, exactly—and most of us have some peculiarity. If we didn't have we'd be even more unusual."
"What about Tino, the servant?" queried Preston.
"I don't think there's any lead there," the chief replied. "I hammered away at him for an hour this morning. He doesn't speak English any too well, but I gathered that Montgomery picked him up in the Philippines just before he came over here. The boy was frightened half out of his senses when I told him that his master had been killed. You've got to remember, though, that if Tino had wanted to do it he had a thousand opportunities in the open. Besides, what we've got to find out first is how Montgomery met his death?"
"Does the Filipino know anything about his master's past?" asked Preston, ignoring the chief's last remark.
"He says not. Montgomery was on his way back to the States from Africa or some place—stopped off in the islands—spent a couple of months there—hired Tino and sailed for San Francisco."
"Africa—" mused the Postal operative. Then, taking another track, he inquired whether the chief had found out if Montgomery was in the habit of getting much mail, especially from foreign points.
"Saunders, the postmaster, says he didn't average a letter a month—and those he did get looked like advertisements. They remembered this special-delivery package last night because it was the first time that the man who brought it out had ever come to the house. He rang the bell at the gate, he says, turned the box over to Tino, and went along."
"Any comment about the package?"
"Only that it was very light and contained something that wabbled around. I asked him because I figured at the time that the revolver might have been in it. But the Filipino has identified that as Montgomery's own gun. Says he'd had it as long as he'd known him."
"Then all we know about this mysterious box," summarized Preston, "is that it was mailed from Sacramento, that it wasn't heavy, that it had a hole about a quarter-inch wide at one end, and that it contained something that—what was the word the special-delivery man used—'wabbled'?"