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you got into the bus yesterday noon?”
    The spokesman, thus perilously addressed, said with haste: “No, sir, I did not. I’m really sorry——You see, we didn’t think—I can’t understand——”
    â€œAll right, all right,” said the Inspector in a gentler tone. “I’m not going to bite you. I’m just looking for information. I’ll tell you what I want to know. You people say there are seventeen in your party. You were seventeen when you left Bohunkus, or wherever you come from; you were seventeen when you landed in New York; you were seventeen when you checked into this dump; you’ve been seventeen on your jaunts around the city. Right so far?”
    There was a unanimous nodding of heads, executed with rapidity.
    â€œThat is,” continued Thumm thoughtfully, “up to noon yesterday. You’d chartered a bus to take you around. You went over to the Forty-Fourth Street and Broadway terminal of the Rivoli company, and you got into your bus. Were you seventeen on the way to the terminal?”
    â€œI—I don’t know,” said the spokesman helplessly. “I really don’t.”
    â€œAll right, then. But one thing is sure. When that bus started out there were nineteen people in it. How do you account for that?”
    â€œNineteen!” exclaimed a stout middle-aged lady with pince-nez glasses. “Well, I noticed——I wondered what that man was doing there!”
    â€œWhat man?” snapped the Inspector; and Patience dropped the spoon she had been toying with and sat very still, watching the mingled triumph and perplexity on the stout lady’s face.
    â€œWhat man, Miss Ruddy?” echoed the spokesman, frowning.
    â€œWhy, the man in that outlandish blue hat! Didn’t any of you notice him? Martha, I believe I mentioned him to you before the bus started. Don’t you remember?”
    The bony virgin named Martha gasped: “Yes, that’s right!”
    Patience and the Inspector looked at each other. It was true, then. George Fisher’s story had been based on verifiable facts.
    â€œDo you recall, Miss—er—Ruddy,” asked Patience with a winning smile “other details of this man’s appearance?”
    Miss Ruddy beamed. “Indeed I do! He was middle-aged, and he had an enormous moustache. Just like Chester Conklin’s, in the movies.” She blushed. “The comedian, you know. Except that it was grey.”
    â€œAnd when Lavinia—Miss Ruddy pointed him out to me,” added the raw-boned lady named Martha excitedly, “I saw that he was tall and thin, too!”
    â€œAnybody else notice him?” demanded the Inspector.
    There were blank looks.
    â€œAnd didn’t it occur to you ladies,” continued Thumm sarcastically, “that a man you didn’t know had no right being in your privately chartered bus?”
    â€œOh, it did,” faltered Miss Ruddy, “but I didn’t know what to do. I thought he might have had something to do with the bus company, you see.”
    The Inspector rolled his eyes ceilingward. “Did you notice this bird on the return trip?”
    â€œNo,” said Miss Ruddy in a trembling voice. “No, I looked especially. But he wasn’t with us.”
    â€œFine. Now we’re getting somewhere. But,” said the Inspector with a grim smile, “that only makes eighteen. And we know there were nineteen of you yesterday in that bus. Come on now, folks, think hard. I’m sure somebody here must have noticed the nineteenth person.”
    â€œI believe,” murmured Patience, “that that charming lady at the end of the table remembers something. I’ve seen a speech trembling on her lips for the past two minutes.”
    The charming lady gulped. “I—I was only going to say,” she quavered, “that I did notice somebody else who—who didn’t belong. Not the man in