It was at this point that the brunette in the Plaza entered the case.
In the Grand Central Station welcoming party, which was concealed behind a crowd, were all the searchers of the previous night, half a cozen of us boys from Headquarters, and Ray Schindler of the Schindler Private Detective Agency, whom the yo Grand Rapids advisors had retained, at Mr. Percy Peck's request, to assist.
Waite, a dapper young man in a huge fur coat, soon appeared, and went directly {o a phone booth. Schindler stepped into the adjoining One. He was too late to catch the number, but he distinctly heard Waite say "Pa‹ up and get out—there's trouble.'
By the time we had traced that call to Room 1105 of the fashionable Plaza overlooking Central Park, and bad made our way through traffic to get there, Dr, and Mrs. A. W Walters of New Rochelle, who had occupied the room for some weeks, had checked out.
They had arrived early the previous month, bringing with them, besides luggage, several oil paintings and a grand piano. Dr. Walters had deposited $300 with the cashier to cover all charges connected with the room, and had thereafter had no contact with the hotel desk, Chambermaids and housekeepers said that the room was never occupied at night, that Mrs. Walters usually arrived in the morning, and that Dr. Walters seldom appeared before 4 p.m. All the elevator boys agreed that Mrs. Walters was a ravishingly beautiful lady. There the information stopped.
Room 1105 was large and luxurious ly furnished and had cheerful windows which gave on the park. Piano and paintings were still there. So were three bags, hastily packed and bearing the one enigmatic initial "H." The contents of these bags revealed nothing as to the identity of their owner, except the perfume she used.
Trailing Waite himself proved even more fruitless. Apparently still grief-stricken, he retired into the fastnesses of his apartment and emerged only to eat enough to keep him alive. Once he ventured as far as the mailbox on the corner and mailed a letter to his wife, which, of course, the boys promptly opened and read, It was a most proper and husbandly epistle, assuring her that he was "awfully lonesome" without her.
Meanwhile, "K. Adams" if he or she ever existed, had apparently vanished from the face of the earth.
At this point, good Goettler, the Police Department's world-famous toxicologist, reported that none of the samples of embalming fluid, which, he had seized in the highly telegram:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.