I beckoned him. "Come in here!" I said. He came with alacrity. I lay at full length as I had done just previously. "Flop down here." He joined me. I pointed to the skirting-board. "See anything there?"
"Only too true," he muttered. "Wonder what it can be! Wriggle up and get it, Bill, the honors are yours, it's your discovery."
There were three tiny pieces of paper, just as I had thought. I took them carefully from the little ledge on which they were resting, and crawled out triumphantly from under the bed.
"Good man!" he grinned. "What are they--exactly--now you've fished 'em out? Pieces of a last week's hotel-bill or an announcement of the local flower-show?"
I shook my head. "Remains of a letter," I grunted--"there's handwriting here."
I handed the fragments to him. He took them eagerly. They were obviously small parts of a letter that had been carelessly torn up by somebody in the room, and in the throwing-away process had by some freak of wind or whimsicality, fluttered to the skirting-board. So I reasoned. Anthony spread them out.
I reproduce the three pieces here as nearly as I can remember them after so long an interval.
I will meet you in the B so when you Mary. at 1.
I gasped! "Good Lord!" I exclaimed. Anthony raised his eyebrows.
"What's this?" he interrogated. "An assignation? Mary?"
"It's Mary Considine," I answered. "It's her handwriting--I've seen it too frequently not to know it. Has she written that to Prescott?"
"No evidence as to whom it's addressed, Bill. We can only conjecture as to that. Also we can only surmise what the capital 'B' stands for."
"What do you think yourself?" I whispered almost fearfully.
"Billiard room, possibly! On the other hand----"
"If it was her way of answering his proposal--why wasn't she frank with us about it? Did she meet him or merely intend to?"
"Look at the handwriting again, Bill! Look at it closely."
I did as he told me. "You're absolutely _certain_ it's Mary Considine's writing?" he urged with intensity in his tone. "You haven't the shred of a doubt?"
"Not a shred," I replied. "Not the vestige of a doubt."
"Very well! I'll see her! I'm pretty accurate at summing people up psychologically, and I'm fully prepared for an adequate explanation."