The Chase of the Golden Plate Read Free Page A

Did you notice the card she gave you?”
    â€œI don’t remember her at all, sir. Many of the ladies wore wraps when they came in, and her costume would not have been noticeable if she had on a wrap.”
    The Supreme Intelligence was thoughtful for another few minutes. At last he turned to Mr. Randolph again.
    â€œYou are certain there was only one man at that ball dressed as a Burglar?” he asked.
    â€œYes, thank Heaven,” replied Mr. Randolph fervently. “If there’d been another one they might have taken the piano.”
    The Supreme Intelligence frowned.
    â€œAnd this girl was dressed like a Western girl?” he asked.
    â€œYes. A sort of Spirit-of-the-West costume.”
    â€œAnd no other woman there wore such a dress?”
    â€œNo,” responded Mr. Randolph.
    â€œNo,” echoed the two detectives.
    â€œNow, Mr. Randolph, how many invitations were issued for the ball?”
    â€œThree or four hundred. It’s a big house,” Mr. Randolph apologised, “and we tried to do the thing properly.”
    â€œHow many persons do you suppose actually attended the ball?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know. Three hundred, perhaps.”
    Detective Mallory thought again.
    â€œIt’s unquestionably the work of two bold and clever professional crooks,” he said at last judicially, and his satellites hung on his words eagerly. “It has every ear-mark of it. They perhaps planned the thing weeks before, and forged invitation-cards, or perhaps stole them—perhaps stole them.”
    He turned suddenly and pointed an accusing finger at the servant, Curtis.
    â€œDid you notice the handwriting on the card the Burglar gave you?” he demanded.
    â€œNo, sir. Not particularly.”
    â€œI mean, do you recall if it was different in any way from the handwriting on the other cards?” insisted the Supreme Intelligence.
    â€œI don’t think it was, sir.”
    â€œIf it had been would you have noticed it?”
    â€œI might have, sir.”
    â€œWere the names written on all the invitation-cards by the same hand, Mr. Randolph?”
    â€œYes: my wife’s secretary.”
    Detective Mallory arose and paced back and forth across the room with wrinkles in his brow.
    â€œAh!” he said at last, “then we know the cards were not forged, but stolen from someone to whom they had been sent. We know this much, therefore—” he paused a moment.
    â€œTherefore all that must be done,” Mr. Randolph finished the sentence, “is to find from whom the card or cards were stolen, who presented them at my door, and who got away with the plate.”
    The Supreme Intelligence glared at him aggressively. Mr. Randolph’s face was perfectly serious. It was his gold plate, you know.
    â€œYes, that’s it,” Detective Mallory assented. “Now we’ll get after this thing right. Downey, you get that automobile the Burglar left at Seven Oaks and find its owner; also find the car the Burglar and the Girl escaped in. Cunningham, you go to Seven Oaks and look over the premises. See particularly if the Girl left a wrap—she didn’t wear one away from there—and follow that up. Blanton, you take a list of invited guests that Mr. Randolph will give you, check off those persons who are known to have been at the ball, and find out all about those who were not, and—follow that up.”
    â€œThat’ll take weeks!” complained Blanton.
    The Supreme Intelligence turned on him fiercely.
    â€œWell?” he demanded. He continued to stare for a moment, and Blanton wrinkled up in the baleful glow of his superior’s scorn. “And,” Detective Mallory added magnanimously, “I will do the rest.”
    Thus the campaign was planned against the Burglar and the Girl.

CHAPTER IV
    Hutchinson Hatch was a newspaper reporter, a long, lean, hungry looking young man with an insatiable appetite for facts. This