The conversation, as usual at such times, consisted mostly of witticisms, and just at present we had a rather serious bit of business in hand.  Kennedy did not betray any of the impatience that I felt, yet I knew he was glad when Marlowe excused himself and we left the party and passed down the corridor while the captain called his car.

“I don’t know how you are going to get at this thing,” he remarked, pausing after he had sent a boy for his driver.  “But I’ll have to rely on you.  I’ve told you all I know.  I’ll see you at noon, at the yards.  My man will take you there.”

As he turned and left us I saw that he was going in the direction of the barber-shop.  Next to it and in connection with it, though in a separate room, was a manicure.  As we passed we looked in.  There, at the manicure’s table, sat the girl who had gone by us in the parlor and had looked so sharply at Marlowe and Alma.

The boy had told us that the car was waiting at a side entrance, but Kennedy seemed now in no haste to go, the more so when Marlowe, instead of going into the barber-shop, apparently changed his mind and entered the manicure’s.  Craig stopped and watched.  Prom where we were we could see Marlowe, though his back was turned, and neither he nor the manicure could see us.

For a moment the captain paused and spoke, then sat down.  Quite evidently he had a keen eye for a pretty face and trim figure.  Nor was there any mistaking the pains which the manicure took to please her rich and elderly customer.  After watching them a moment Kennedy lounged over to the desk in the lobby.

“Who is the little manicure girl?” he asked.

The clerk smiled.  “Seems as if she was a good drawing-card for the house, doesn’t it?” he returned.  “All the men notice her.  Why, her name is Rae Melzer.”  He turned to speak to another guest before Kennedy could follow with another inquiry.

As we stood before the desk, a postman, with the parcel post, arrived.  “Here’s a package addressed to Dr. Fernando Gavira,” he said, brusquely.  “It was broken in the mail.  See?”

Kennedy, waiting for the clerk to be free again, glanced casually at the package at first, then with a sudden, though concealed, interest.  I followed his eye.  In the crushed box could be seen some thin broken pieces of glass and a wadding of cotton-wool.

As the clerk signed for another package Craig saw a chance, reached over and abstracted two or three of the broken pieces of glass, then turned with his back to the postman and clerk and examined them.

One I saw at once had a rim around it.  It was quite apparently the top of a test-tube.  The other, to which some cotton-wool still adhered, was part of the rounded bowl.  Quickly Craig dropped the pieces into one of the hotel envelopes that stood in a rack on the desk, then, changing his mind about asking more now about the little manicure, strode out of the side entrance where Marlowe’s car was waiting for us.