Chapter 3

At luncheon I questioned Lavender vigorously, but he had little information to impart. He ate in silence for the greater part of the meal and afterward smoked several thoughtful cigarettes.

“I’ve told you practically all I know about the case, Gilly,” was all he said in direct reply to my questions. “And what I know, I know chiefly because it must be so. Of actual evidence I have very little, but there certainly have been many significant indications.”

“And now we go back to Miss Minor and her troubles?”

“Exactly! You’ve no objections to going back to Miss Minor, surely?”

I laughed. “None in the world. I like her very much. But what did you say in your note to Morley, Lavender?”

“Just this: Morley, open safe at earliest opportunity. It contains the solution of two mysteries. See morning papers. Now will you call a taxi?”

On that we fared forth to attack the problem we, or at any rate Lavender, had been employed to solve. As we drove north across the Loop in a swirling ocean of traffic my mind became occupied with thoughts of the charming young person we were going to see, and I looked forward with pleasure to our second meeting. Lavender, whatever his thoughts were, smoked many cigarettes and drummed impatiently with his fingers on the narrow window ledge. When he had finished with one cigarette, he lighted another from the glowing tip of the old one and resumed his drumming. I supposed him to be in deep thought.

The progress of the taxi was slow, for the press was bewildering. A mounted policeman, dancing his horse in the maelstrom, recognized Lavender and gave him a nod of greeting. The line of automobiles had stopped for perhaps the twelfth time. The officer’s greeting called my friend’s wandering attention back to his surroundings, and suddenly he was sitting straight up and looking at a shop window within line of his vision. It was a barber shop, as it happened, and as vastly uninteresting as most barber shops, as far as I could see. But Lavender had seen more than the shop.

“See the placard, Gilly,” he nodded. “The ‘Tinfoil Revue’ again. We can’t dodge it, it seems. The woman in the picture, if I’m not mistaken, is the very person we were discussing. No, not Miss Minor. I mean Miss Sidney Kane.”

I looked and saw that he was right. Her name appeared below the portrait in letters of some size.

“An atrocious portrait, too, I should imagine,” he continued. “Do you know, Gilly, on second thought I think I shall be altruistic this afternoon. You shall go alone to Miss Minor, pay our respects, and listen to anything she may have to tell us. I will inform you what further you are to ascertain. As for myself, I shall—this is Wednesday, isn’t it, Gilly?—I shall go to a matinee, I think, against the sterner labors that lie ahead of us. Thus we shall both be benefited, according to our tastes.”

I am, of course, frequently a fool, but I am never as big a fool as Lavender’s remarks often would suggest. I looked back at him sternly.

“What you mean is, that you will go to the ‘Tinfoil Revue’ and see Miss Kane,” I corrected.

“Well, if you put it that way, yes,” he grinned. “The fact is, Gilly, the lady attracts me, and there already has been so much coincidence in this case, or in these cases I should say, that I’m determined to check them against each other and see what happens. The theatre, I believe, is just around the corner.”

“What am I to ask Miss Minor?” I demanded.

“First, whether she has heard from her father. I’m inclined to think that she has not, but ask her anyway. Tell her that I think she will hear from him shortly, but not to be too sanguine. Then ask her permission to look casually over his desk, or whatever he uses, to see if there are any clues to his movements. Probably the young lady will have done this herself, but you will make a more thorough job of it. Look at the letters if there are any, however far back they may go, and don’t leap at any wild conclusions whatever you find. Your principal task is to remember what you see so that you can tell me about it to-night.”