The Million-Dollar Suitcase

								

"How do you get the exact minute Clayte arrived?" Anson stopped me at
this point, "and the positive knowledge that he had the suitcase with
him?"
"Clayte asked the time--from the clerk at the desk--as he came in. He
put the suitcase down while he set his watch. The clerk saw him pick it
up and go into the elevator; Mrs. Griggsby, a woman at work mending
carpet on the seventh floor--which is his--saw him come out of the
elevator carrying it, and let himself into his room. There the trail
ends."
"Ends?" As my voice halted young Gilbert's word came like a bullet. "The
trail can't end unless the man was there."
"Or the suitcase," little old Sillsbee quavered, and Worth Gilbert gave
him a swift, half-humorous glance.
"Bath and bedroom," I said, "that suite has three windows, seven
stories above the ground. I found them all locked--not mere latches--the
St. Dunstan has burglar-proof locks. No disturbance in the room; all
neat, in place, the door closed with the usual spring lock; and I had to
get Mrs. Griggsby to move, since she was tacking the carpet right at the
threshold. Everything was in that room that should have been
there--except Clayte and the suitcase."
The babel of complaint and suggestion broke out as I finished, exactly
as it had done when I got to this point before: "The Griggsby woman
ought to be kept under surveillance"; "The clerk, the house servants
ought to be watched,"--and so on, and so on. I curtly reiterated my
assurance that such routine matters had been promptly and thoroughly
attended to. My nerves were getting raw. I'm not so young as I was. This
promised to be one of those grinding cases where the detective agency is
run through the rollers so many times that it comes out pretty slim in
the end, whether that end is failure or success.
The only thing in sight that it didn't make me sick to look at was that
silent young fellow sitting there, never opening his trap, giving things
a chance to develop, not rushing in on them with the forceps. It was a
crazy thing for Whipple to call this meeting--have all these old, scared
men on my back before I could take the measure of what I was up against.
What, exactly, had the Van Ness Avenue Bank lost? That, and not anything
else, was the key for my first moves. And at last a clerk crossed to our
table, touched Whipple's arm and presented a sheet of paper.
"I'll read the total, gentlemen." The president stared at the sheet he
held, moistened his lips, gulped, gasped, "I--I'd no idea it was so
much!" and finished in a changed voice, "nine hundred and eighty seven
thousand, two hundred and thirty four dollars."
A deathlike hush. Dykeman's mere look was a call for the ambulance;
Anson slumped in his chair; little old Sillsbee sat twisted away so that
his face was in shadow, but the knuckles showed bone white where his
hand gripped the table top. None of them seemed able to speak; the young
voice that broke startlingly on the stillness had the effect of scaring