The Little River news., 1920-03-20

1 where to look for the pl0tterS. real ized that it would be useless to ques- tion him further. He would admit suspecting no one until he was sure of their guilt, quality l admired greatly.
 You can count on me-" repeated. '.Ill be here at three tomorrow. l Yet how foolish it was for any of us to predict what we will be doing or 1 where we will be twenty-four hours from now. Seldom do things happen in the routine of our lives as we had ! anticipated. I was not there the next 1. day at the time appointed. By no pos sibility could have been there, how ever much I might have wished to. Many things had happened in quick succession.
 How it came about that my promise to meet German went unfulfilled can best be explained by narrating the events Of the evening after l returned 1 to the Granddeck. It was nearly five ] when I left the detective. ] strolled ] leisurely down town and had dinner in l the cafe where on one occasion l had 1 seen the scar-faced man. fingered i there for a long time over my coffee hoping in vain that he might appear. l even ventured to cautiously question l the waiter and head waiter describing ] the man as best 1 could, bv' both of l them insisted that they never had seen 1 any such person. As l walked hone l I kept wary eye out to niake sure l was not being followed, but appar la cntly no one was now shadowing me. It was nne-thirty when l reached l home. It had been arranged that Bar hara about ten would signal me that we might have chat from our re- Spective windows. As I sat in my room waiting for the time to come, I was reviewing the case in all it's as poets. Indeed there was hardly a walk ing moment that was not thinking Of the many mysteries about us.' l was wondering if, when the case was cleared up the mysterious whispers that we all had heard would also he explained l recalled Claire Brad ford's unexpected visit to my apart ment the evening before and her con fusion when l had captured her. l wondered if the explanations she had offered had been the truth. Was she really trying to locate the source of the whispers? I looked interestedly up at the section of the wall that l had found her inspecting. What had she hoped to discover there?
 decided to make a close inspec- tion of both sides of the wall. As 1 lighted up the sitting room and hall for this purpose. something unusual came to my notice that had hitherto escaped me entirely.
 THE INNER WALL OF MY ROOM the one running along the hall of the apartment-HAD THE APPEAR ANCE OF BEING AT LEAST FOUR FEET THICK.
 It seemed so absurd that refused to believe the evidence my eyes had given me. In these modern days of steel construction there was no reason for a wall being of medieval propor- tions. sprang to my great-aunt's work basket and began rummaging to see if could find a tape measure. and luckily my search was quickly re warded.
 sketched a rough diagram of the rear rooms, and began measuring them off. carefully checking my figures as went along. found myself grow ing wildly excited as the tape meas ure confirmed what my eyes already had told me. The inner wall was at least four feet thick.
 With thrills at the thought of the possibility of a secret passage there. climbed up on a chair just as Claire Bradford had done. and began in specting the wall inch by inch. Even as l did so could not help laughing at myself. The idea that modern apartment building might contain secret passage was utterly ridiculous. yet as I pounded lightly on the wall 1t gave forth hollow sound, vastly different from any other part of the room. I was convinced that between my room and the hall there was space enough at least for passageway in which man might walk.
 I surveyed with growing interest the wooden paneling that in my room ran clear up tO the ceiling. In the other rooms there was no paneling, Mount: ing the chair again pressed sharply against the wood at the point from which the sound had eeened to come It seeE d tC me 1t gave little ro my touch :. ;'lck one oc the sections a sharp blow. It drOppsa back full half-incb. lesving wbA: looked like n doOrwa. -a space thres feet wide by five fear hign. The bottom of the opening WAS hardly two feet from the floor. If there was . passageway here, thls panel certainly would ex. plain low my rooms had been surrep- titiously visited.
 Fevershly I worked at the panel try ing to push it further back. If there was passageway there in the wall was determined to see whither it led My efforts to move the panel further
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