"
What was the meaning of it? Clearly, as we probed deeper into the
case, its ramifications grew wider than anything we had yet expected.
Why had Miss Lovelace gone to Washington, of all places, at this
torrid season of the year?
The coroner had scarcely left us, more mystified than ever, when a
telephone message came from McBride saying that he had some important
news for us if we would meet him at the St. Cenis Hotel within an
hour. He would say nothing about it over the wire.
As Kennedy hung up the receiver he quietly took a pistol from a
drawer of his desk, broke it quickly, and looked thoughtfully at
the cartridges in the cylinder. Then he snapped it shut and stuck
it into his pocket.
"There's no telling what we may run up against before we get back
to the laboratory," he remarked and we rode down to meet McBride.
The description which the house man had sent out to the other hotel
detectives the night before had already produced a result. Within
the past two days a man answering the description of the younger man
whom McBride had seen in the caf=82 and a woman who might very
possibly have been Madame's maid had come to the St. Cenis as M. and
Mme. Duval. Their baggage was light, but they had been at pains to
impress upon the hotel that they were persons of some position and
that it was going direct from the railroad to the steamer, after
their tour of America.
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