The Dark Highway by Arthur Gask

"During the time I was with Dice, I was able to make two searches in his room," Larose told Sam Gover. "One a very quick and hurried one, but the other a very thorough one. The first time I examined his clothes, and, tucked away right at the back of the wardrobe, I found a coat with dark stains all down the front and on the inside of both sleeves. They looked to me like those of old blood." Larose shrugged his shoulders. "Of course they may have not been blood--they may have been paint or anything, but"--he looked peculiarly at Sam Gover--"their significance to me became very deadly when I found an empty envelope in the coat addressed to James Dice and dated December 22nd." He paused for a moment, and then asked quietly: "You remember that date, don't you, Mr.

Gover? Well, doesn't that look as if he had worn the coat on the very night the tragedy occurred?" His voice became hard and emphatic. "But that isn't all. I saw that coat the first time I searched the room. Dice had no suspicions of me then, and I was searching hurriedly when he was having his bath." He lowered his voice again and rapped out his words slowly and one by one. "The second time I searched his room the coat was not there. He had got rid of it as damaging evidence because he had found out who I was."