It was one o’clock when Hotchkiss finally left.
We had by that time arranged a definite course of
action—Hotchkiss to search Sullivan’s
rooms and if possible find evidence to have him held
for larceny, while I went to Cresson.
Strangely enough, however, when I entered the train
the following morning, Hotchkiss was already there.
He had bought a new note-book, and was sharpening
a fresh pencil.
“I changed my plans, you see,” he said,
bustling his newspaper aside for me. “It
is no discredit to your intelligence, Mr. Blakeley,
but you lack the professional eye, the analytical
mind. You legal gentlemen call a spade a spade,
although it may be a shovel.”
“’A primrose by the river’s
brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And nothing more!’”
I quoted as the train pulled out.
A NIGHT AT THE LAURELS
I slept most of the way to Cresson, to the disgust
of the little detective. Finally he struck up
an acquaintance with a kindly-faced old priest on
his way home to his convent school, armed with a roll
of dance music and surreptitious bundles that looked
like boxes of candy. From scraps of conversation
I gleaned that there had been mysterious occurrences
at the convent,—ending in the theft of
what the reverend father called vaguely, “a quantity
of undermuslins.” I dropped asleep at that
point, and when I roused a few moments later, the
conversation had progressed. Hotchkiss had a
diagram on an envelope.
“With this window bolted, and that one inaccessible,
and if, as you say, the—er—garments
were in a tub here at X, then, as you hold the key
to the other door,—I think you said the
convent dog did not raise any disturbance? Pardon
a personal question, but do you ever walk in your
sleep?”
The priest looked bewildered.
“I’ll tell you what to do,” Hotchkiss
said cheerfully, leaning forward, “look around
a little yourself before you call in the police.
Somnambulism is a queer thing. It’s a
question whether we are most ourselves sleeping or
waking. Ever think of that? Live a saintly
life all day, prayers and matins and all that, and
the subconscious mind hikes you out of bed at night
to steal undermuslins! Subliminal theft, so
to speak. Better examine the roof.”
I dozed again. When I wakened Hotchkiss sat
alone, and the priest, from a corner, was staring
at him dazedly, over his breviary.
It was raining when we reached Cresson, a wind-driven
rain that had forced the agent at the newsstand to
close himself in, and that beat back from the rails
in parallel lines of white spray. As he went
up the main street, Hotchkiss was cheerfully oblivious
of the weather, of the threatening dusk, of our generally
draggled condition. My draggled condition, I
should say, for he improved every moment, —his
eyes brighter, his ruddy face ruddier, his collar newer
and glossier. Sometime, when it does not encircle
the little man’s neck, I shall test that collar
with a match.
