er
carries a bundle, so I says to him, 'Shall I ring for a messenger to
carry your package?' 'No,' says he, and leaves the house."

Tommy paused, and there was a shake of excitement in his voice when he
resumed: "In five minutes Mr. Carrington comes back without any
overcoat, and says, Tommy, run upstairs and get me an overcoat.' I
looks, and he was as sober as I am at this minute, Mr. Duane, and I
begins to feel queer. It sort of comes over me all of a sudden that the
voice of the other man I'd unlocked the door for was different from this
one. But I'd been reading the baseball news, and didn't notice much at
the time. So I says, hoping it was some kind of a jolly, 'Did you lose
the one you just wore out, sir?' 'I wore no coat,' he says, giving me a
look. Well, he goes to his apartment, me after him, and there was things
flung all over the place, and all the signs of a hurry job by a
sneak-thief. Mr. Carrington was kind of petrified, but I runs downstairs
and tells the superintendent, and he chases me off to the station. The
superintendent was mad and rags me good, for there never was a job of
that kind done in the house. But the other man was the same looking as
the real, so how was I to know?"

Duane started off with Tommy, and winked to the reporters to follow. At
the Quadrangle, a bachelor apartment house noted for its high rents and
exclusiveness, Duane was met at the entrance by the superintendent, who
told the officer that there was nothing in the story, after all. It was
a lark of a friend of his, Mr. Carrington had said, and was annoyed that
news of the affair had been sent to the police. The superintendent was
glad that Tommy had not reached the station house. Duane looked
inquiringly at the superintendent, who gravely winked.

"Good night," said Duane, holding out his hand. "Good night," replied
the other, taking the hand. "You won't report this at the station?"
"No," said Duane, who then put his hand in his pocket and returned to
the reporters. He told them what the superintendent had said.

"What do you make out of it?" asked Fetner.

"Nothing," the officer replied. "If I tried to make out the cases we are
asked not to investigate, I'd have mighty little time to work on the
cases we are wanted in. If Mr. Carrington says he hasn't been robbed, it
isn't our business to prove that he has been. You won't print anything
about this?"

Fetner said he would not. To have done so after that promise would have