of renting it than a high-brow criminal
investigator hunting clews.

"He lived here--years, you say?" I nodded. She slid her hand over the
plush cushions of a morris chair, threw back the covers of an iron bed
in one corner and felt of the mattress, then went and stood before the
bare little dresser. "Why, the place expresses no more personality than
a room in a transient hotel!"

"He hadn't any personality," I growled, and got the flicker of a smile
from her eye.

"What about those library books he carried in the suitcase?" Worth came
in with an echo from the bank meeting.

"Some more bunk," I said morosely. "So far we've not been able to locate
him as a patron of any public or private library, and the hotel clerk's
sure his mail never contained a correspondence course--in fact, neither
here nor at the bank can any one remember his getting any mail. If he
ever carried books in that suitcase as Knapp believed, it was several
years back."

"Several years back," Miss Wallace repeated low.

"Myself, I've given up the idea of his studying. This crime doesn't look
to me like any sudden temptation of a model bank clerk, spending his
spare hours over correspondence courses. I rather expect to find him
just plain crook."

"Oh, no," the girl objected. "It's too big and too well done to have
been planned by a dull, commonplace crook."

"Right you are," I agreed, with restored good humor. "A keen brain
planned this, but not Clayte's. There had to be an instrument--and that
was Clayte--also, likely, one or more to help in the getaway."

The getaway! That brought us back with a thump to the present moment.
Our pretty girl had been all over the shop now, glanced into bathroom,
closet and cupboard, noted abandoned hats, clothing and shoes, the
electric plate where Clayte got his breakfast coffee and toast, asked
without much interest where he ate his other meals, and nodded
agreeingly when she found that he'd been only an occasional customer at
the neighboring restaurants, never regular, apparently eating here and
there down-town. She seemed to get something out of that; what I didn't
know.

"You speak of this crime not being committed on impulse," she turned to
me at length. "How long ahead should you say he planned it?"

"Or had it planned and prepared for him," I reminded her.

"Well, that, then," she conceded with slight impatience. "How long do
you think it might have been planned or prepared for? Years?"

"Hardl