I ate a light breakfast, made some phone calls, then walked over to the Galaxy Downtowner. The clerk who’d checked in Charles Jones wasn’t on duty. I’d read his interrogation report in the file and didn’t really expect I could get more out of him than the cops could.

An assistant manager let me look at Jones’s registration card. He’d printed “Charles Owen Jones” on the line marked “Name,” and on the “Signature” line he’d printed “C. O. JONES” in block capitals. I pointed this out to the assistant manager, who told me the discrepancy was common. “People will put their full name on one line and a shorter version on the other,” he said. “Either way is legal.”

“But this isn’t a signature.”

“Why not?”

“He printed it.”

He shrugged. “Some people print everything,” he said. “The fellow made a telephone reservation and paid cash in advance. I wouldn’t expect my people to question a signature under such circumstances.”

That wasn’t my point. What had struck me was that Jones had managed to avoid leaving a specimen of his handwriting, and I found that interesting. I looked at the name where he’d printed it in full. The first three letters of Charles, I found myself thinking, were also the first three letters of Chance. And what, pray tell, did that signify? And why look for ways to hang my own client?

I asked if there’d been any previous visits by our Mr. Jones in the past few months. “Nothing in the past year,” he assured me. “We carry previous registrations alphabetically in our computer and one of the detectives had that information checked. If that’s all—”

“How many other guests signed their names in block caps?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Suppose you let me look through the registration cards for the past two, three months.”

“To look for what?”

“People who print like this guy.”

“Oh, I really don’t think so,” he said. “Do you realize how many cards are involved? This is a 635-room hotel. Mr.—”

“Scudder.”

“Mr. Scudder. That’s over eighteen thousand cards a month.”

“Only if all your guests leave after one night.”

“The average stay is three nights. Even so, that’s over six thousand registration cards a month, twelve thousand cards in two months. Do you realize how long it would take to look at twelve thousand cards?”

“A person could probably do a couple thousand an hour,” I said, “since all he’d be doing is scanning the signature to see if it’s in script or in block caps. We’re just talking about a couple of hours. I could do it or you could have some of your people do it.”