Burton laughed. "Why, what nonsense! Beautiful nonsense, if you will, but utter nonsense, all the same. According to your own account, you are dealing with some unscrupulous person who is trying to turn suspicion upon you. Why should you help him? He certainly wouldn't be trying to bring about an investigation unless it would help on his purpose,--assuming that he has the purpose Miss Underwood attributes to him."
"Do you happen to have one of those handbills you speak of about?" asked Burton.
"There's one on the mantel. Give it to him, Leslie."
Burton crossed to the mantel and picked up the paper. It was a single sheet, typewritten. It read: "Search Underwood's rooms. You will find proof."
"Not many at a time, but a few one place one night and another place the next night. Every day since that damnable hold-up, I have heard directly or indirectly that some one has received or seen some such notice."
Burton's eye wandered around the room. "When they come, I suppose they will begin here. This is the room where you would be most likely to conceal the evidence of your crimes, I take it. Now, let me consider where you would hide it. There might be a hiding place beneath the bricks in front of the fireplace, or behind some of the loose tiles back of the mantel. I see that one book has recently been disturbed in that set of medical encyclopedias,--the dust on the shelf shows it. Did you put something behind it?"
Laughingly he pulled out the volume he had indicated, and with it a handkerchief which had been thrust behind it. He shook it out, and then he laughed no more. There were two holes cut in the handkerchief for eyelets, and the wrinkled corners showed that it had been knotted hard, as a kerchief that had been tied over a man's face would have been.
"Santa Fe!" gasped Dr. Underwood, wrinkling up his face in one of his peculiar grimaces. It served to conceal his emotions as effectively as a mask.
Leslie sprang to her feet and stared hard at the rag, with a fascinated look. She had unconsciously clasped her hands together, and there was a look of fright in her eyes.
"Now do you see?" she cried. "That's the sort of thing we have to expect all the time."
Burton crushed the kerchief in his hand. "A very crude device. Your committee would have to be very special fools to believe that a man would preserve such a damning piece of evidence when there was a fireplace in the room, and matches were presumably within reach. Shall I burn it up?"