"Who are you?" inquired the first voice.
"Hawkshaw, the detective."
Anderson's cheeks flushed, but he returned the bag and its contents
without comment and walked out, heedless of the laughter of the
six reporters. The injustice of their ridicule burnt him like a
branding-iron, for his only offense lay in trying the impossible.
These fellows had done their best and had failed, yet they jeered at
him because he had tackled a forlorn hope. They had taken the trail
when it was hot and had lost it; now they railed at him when he took
it cold.
All that afternoon he tramped the streets, thinking, thinking, until
his brain went stale. The only fresh clues he had discovered thus
far were the marks on finger and thumb, the fact that the girl was a
Canadian, and that she had possessed but one mitten instead of two.
This last, for obvious reasons, was too trivial to mean anything, and
yet in so obscure a case it could not be ignored. The fact that she
was a Canadian helped but little, therefore the best point upon which
to hang a line of reasoning seemed to be those black spots on the left
hand. But they stumped Anderson absolutely.
He altered his mental approach to the subject and reflected upon the
girl's belongings. Taken in their entirety they showed nothing save
that the girl was poor, therefore he began mentally to assort them,
one by one. First, clothes. They were ordinary clothes; they betrayed
nothing. Second, the purse. It was like a million other purses and
showed no distinguishing mark, no peculiarity. Third, the jewelry. It
was cheap and common, of a sort to be found in any store. Fourth, the
morphine-bottle. Paul was forced likewise to dismiss consideration of
that. There remained nothing but the scrap of paper, torn from the
corner of a large sheet and containing these penciled figures:
9.25
6.25
----
3.00
It was a simple sum in subtraction, a very simple sum indeed; too
simple, Anderson reflected, for any one to reduce to figures unless
those figures had been intended for a purpose. He recalled the face
at the morgue and vowed that such a girl could have done the sum
mentally. Then why the paper? Why had she taken pains to tear off a
piece of wrapping-paper, jot down figures so easy to remember,
and preserve them in her purse? Why, she did so because she was
methodical, something answered. But, his alter ego reasoned, if she
had been sufficiently methodical to note a trivial transaction so
carefully, she would have been sufficiently methodical to use some
better, some more methodical method. She would not have torn off a
corner of thick wrapping-paper upon which to keep her books. There was
but one answer, memorandum!
All right, memorandum it was, for the time being. Now then, in what
business could she have been engaged where she found it necessary to
keep memoranda of such inconsiderable sums? Oh, Lord! There were a
million! Paul had been walking on thin ice from the start; now it gave
way beneath him, so he abandoned this train of thought and went back
once more to the bundle of clothes. Surely there was a clue concealed
somewhere among them, if only he could find it. They were poor
clothes, and yet, judging by their cut, he fancied the girl had looked
exceedingly well in them--nay, even modish. She had evidently spent
much time on them, as the beautiful needlework attested. At this point
Anderson's mind ran out on to thin ice again, so he reverted to the
girl herself for the _n_th time. She was Canadian, her hands were
useful, there were tiny blood-blisters on the left thumb and index
finger, and the skin was roughened and torn minutely, evidently by
some sharp instrument. What instrument? He answered the question
almost before he had voiced it. A needle, of course!
Paul stopped in his walk so abruptly that a man poked him in the back
with a ladder; but he paid no heed, for his mind was leaping. That
thickening of the skin, those tiny scratches, those blood-blisters,
those garments without mark of maker, yet so stylish in cut and so
carefully made, and furthermore that memorandum:
9.25
6.25
----
3.00
"Why, she was a dressmaker!" said Anderson, out loud. He went back
over his reasoning, but it held good--so good that he would have
wagered his own clothes that he was right. Yes, and those figures
represented some trifling purchases or commission--for a customer, no
doubt.
It followed naturally that she was not a Buffalo dressmaker, else she
would have been identified long since; nor was it likely that she came
from any city, for her clothes had not given him the impression of
being city-made, and, moreover, the publicity given to the case
through the press, even allowing for the fact that the printed
description had been vague, would have been sure to uncover her
identity. No, she was a Canadian country seamstress.
The young man's mind went back a few years to his boyhood on a
Michigan farm, where visiting dressmakers used to come and stay by the
week to make his mother's clothes. They usually carried a little
flat trunk filled with patterns, yard sticks, forms, and other
paraphernalia of the trade. Paul remembered that the owners used to
buy the cloths and materials at the country stores, and render a
strict accounting thereof to his mother. Well, where was the trunk
that went with this country dressmaker?
The question of baggage had puzzled him from the start. Had the girl
been possessed of a grip or bundle of any kind at the time of her
death that question would have been answered. But there was absolutely
nothing of the sort in her room. Her complete lack of luggage had
made him doubt, at first, that she was an out-of-town visitor; but,
following his recent conclusions, he decided now that directly the
opposite was true. She had come to Buffalo with nothing but a trunk,
otherwise she would have taken her hand-luggage with her to the Main
Street rooming-house. It remained to find that trunk.
This problem threatened even greater difficulties than any hitherto,
and Paul shivered as the raw Lake wind searched through his clothes.
He wondered if it had been as cold as this when the girl arrived in
Buffalo. Yes, assuredly. Then why did she go out with only one mitten?
His reason told him that the other one had been lost by the police.
But the police are careful, as a rule. They had saved every other
article found in the girl's possession, even to a brooch and pin and
scrap of paper. Probably the girl herself had lost it. But country
dressmakers are careful, too; they are not given to losing mittens,
especially in cold weather. It was more reasonable to believe that she
had mislaid it among her belongings; inasmuch as those belongings,
according to Paul's logic, were doubtless contained in her trunk, that
was probably where the missing mitten would be found. But, after all,
had she really brought a trunk with her?
Like a flash came the recollection of that key stuck to the bottom of
the girl's leather purse at the coroner's office. Ten minutes later
Paul was back at the City Hall.
For a second time he was greeted with laughter by the reportorial
squad; again he paid no heed.
"Why, you saw those things not two hours ago," protested the coroner's
clerk, in answer to his inquiry.
"I want to see them again."
"Well, I'm busy. You've had them once, that's enough."
"Friend," said Anderson, quietly, "I want those things and I want them
quick. You give them to me or I'll go to the man higher up and get
them--and your job along with them."
The fellow obeyed reluctantly. Paul picked the key loose and examined
it closely. While he was thus engaged, one of the reporters behind him
said:
"Aha! At last he has the key to the mystery."
The general laughter ceased abruptly when the object of this banter
thrust the key into his pocket and advanced threateningly toward the
speaker, his face white with rage. The latter rose to his feet; he
undertook to execute a dignified retreat, but Anderson seized him
viciously, flung him back, and pinned him against the wall, crying,
furiously:
"You dirty rat! If you open your face to me again, I'll brain you, and
that goes for all of this death-watch." He took in the other five men
with his reddened eyes. "When you fellows see me coming, hole up.
Understand?"
His grip was so fierce, his mouth had such a wicked twist to it, that
his victim understood him perfectly and began to grin in a sickly,
apologetic fashion. Paul reseated the reporter at his desk with
such violence that a chair leg gave way; then he strode out of the
building.
For the next few hours Anderson tramped the streets in impotent anger,
striving to master himself, for that trifling episode had so upset him
that he could not concentrate his mind upon the subject in hand. When
he tried to do so his conclusions seemed grotesquely fanciful and
farfetched. This delay was all the more annoying because on the morrow
the girl was to be buried, and, therefore, the precious hours
were slipping away. He tried repeatedly to attain that abstract,
subconscious mood in which alone shines the pure light of inductive
reasoning.
"Where is that trunk? Where is that trunk? Where is that trunk?" he
repeated, tirelessly. Could it be in some other rooming-house? No. If
the girl had disappeared from such a place, leaving her trunk behind,
the publicity would have uncovered the fact. It might be lying in the
baggage-room of some hotel, to be sure; but Paul doubted that, for the
same reason. The girl had been poor, too; it was unlikely that she
would have gone to a high-priced hotel. Well, he couldn't examine all
the baggage in all the cheap hotels of the city--that was evident.
Somehow he could not picture that girl in a cheap hotel; she was too
fine, too patrician. No, it was more likely that she had left her
trunk in some railroad station. This was a long chance, but Paul took
it.
The girl had come from Canada, therefore Anderson went to the Grand
Trunk Railway depot and asked for the baggage-master. There were other
roads, but this seemed the most likely.
A raw-boned Irish baggage-man emerged from the confusion, and of a
sudden Paul realized the necessity of even greater tact here than he
had used with the Scotch girl, for he had no authority of any sort
behind him by virtue of which he could demand so much as a favor.
"Are you a married man?" he inquired, abruptly.
"G'wan! I thought ye wanted a baggage-man," the big fellow replied.
"Don't kid me; this is important."
"Shure, I am, but I don't want any accident insurance. I took a chance
and I'm game."
"Have you any daughters?"
"Two of them. But what's it to ye?"
"Suppose one of them disappeared?"
The baggage-man seized Anderson by the shoulder; his eyes dilated;
with a catch in his voice he cried:
"Love o' God, speak out! What are ye drivin' at?"
"Nothing has happened to your girls, but--"
"Then what in hell--?"
"Wait! I had to throw a little scare into you so you'd understand what
I'm getting at. Suppose one of your girls lay dead and unidentified
in the morgue of a strange city and was about to be buried in the
Potter's Field. You'd want to know about it, wouldn't you?"
"Are ye daft? Or has something really happened? If not, it's a damn
fool question. What d'ye want?"
"Listen! You'd want her to have a decent burial, and you'd want her
mother to know how she came to such a pass, wouldn't you?"