"Very curious," was the only comment he made.
"But, look here, Mr. Merritt; what more do you want to convince you of the Frenchman's guilt?"
"Proofs; that's all," he replied cheerfully.
"But what further proof do you need? Here you have a man who is undoubtedly insane, who is furthermore an inmate of the Rosemere, and who, on Tuesday evening, went out with the avowed intention of killing his supposed rival; and, to cap the climax, the victim's hat is found in his possession. And yet, you have doubts!"
"By the way," he said, "I must go to the hospital, and get that hat before it disappears again."
"It didn't occur to me before, but when we put him into the ambulance, he was bareheaded," I confessed.
Merritt uttered an exclamation of impatience.
"We'll go to your place, then; it must be there. When you saw him in the street, he had on a hat similar to the one we are looking for, didn't he?"
"Then it's probably somewhere in your hall. That you shouldn't have noticed its absence does not surprise me so much, but that my man should have overlooked an article of such importance, does astonish me. It's his business to look after just such details."
When we reached the house we had to fight our way through a crowd of reporters, but in the hall, sure enough, we found the hat. Merritt positively pounced on it, and, taking it into my office, examined it carefully.
"What do you think of it?" I at last asked.
"I'm not yet prepared to say, Doctor; besides, you and I are now playing on different sides of the fence--of that $50, in other words, and till I can produce my pretty criminal, mum's the word."
"Let me see," replied the detective; "to-day is Tuesday. What do you say to this day week? If I haven't been able to prove my case before then, I will acknowledge myself in the wrong and hand you the $50."
I am ashamed to say that all this time I had forgotten about poor Madame. Having remembered her, I went to her at once, and found her violently hysterical and attended by several well-meaning, if helpless, Irish women, who listened to her voluble French with awe, not unmixed with distrust. I at last succeeded in calming her, but I was glad her master was spending several days out of town, for I could imagine nothing more distasteful to that correct gentleman than all this noise and notoriety. I was afraid that if he heard that more reporters were awaiting his return, he would not come back at all.