He examined this
attentively for a second; and then, his face hardening, he slipped it
into his coat pocket.
He resumed his musings, and resumed his search through the room. Virat
was clever enough to find means of disposing of the bonds in some
fashion or other, and too clever to have ever committed murder for them
otherwise--there was no doubt of that. And, after all, what difference
did it make whatever Virat's method might be! It was extraneous,
immaterial. Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders. The vital question
was--where were the bonds?
It was a strange search there in the murderer's room, the flashlight
winking and flinging its little gleams of light through the blackness; a
strange search, thorough as only Jimmie Dale could make it--and still
leave no tell-tale sign behind to witness that a single object in the
room had been disturbed. But the search was futile; and at the end
Jimmie Dale smiled whimsically.
"The process of elimination again!" he muttered. "I seem to be obsessed
with that to-night. Well, not being here, there's only one place the
bonds _can_ be. The process of elimination has its advantages." The
flashlight circled around the room, and held for a moment on the
electric-light switch near the door.
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