Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/245

 think you’ve hit it! Ah, the perspicacity of the working classes! You think⸺”

“Well, I think a ten thousand dollar bill is a pretty decent sort of marker, boss,” said Eddie, evenly. “If I was doing the marking, I think⸺”

“Elementary, Watson, elementary!” quoted Val, now thoroughly alive to the idea. “I remember exactly where that bill was—it was in the Bible, page two hundred. Deuteronomy. Maybe there’s a passage that refers to it in this Bible—I know the exact chapter, because I read over a little of it at the time. Let’s have it, Eddie.”

Eddie handed him the copy of the Bible that lay on the little table beside the bed—“The Property of the Gideons”—there are hundreds of thousands of them scattered over this land, in almost every hotel room in the country, a familiar, black-backed Bible with the red-edged pages. Val read the section carefully, but could find nothing that looked like a clew to what he wanted. He read it over carefully again, and then shook his head as he put it down.

“Nix,” he said. “Nothing doing.”

“I didn’t think you’d find anything there,” said Eddie. “You’d have to look at the Bible he used. Might be⸺”

“Probably you’re right, Eddie, if there’s anything in this theory. A Bible’s a pretty big book, and a man might make annotations in it that could easily be overlooked unless you knew just where to hunt for them. Then the only thing to do is to⸺”

“To lift the books out of Teck’s room⸺”

“Again!” laughed Val. “Say, we could take a moving picture of those books, they’ve been doing so much traveling. But I think you have the right angle, Eddie,