A FINE GOLD CHAIN
The conductor held it out to me, his face sternly accusing.
“Is this another coincidence?” he asked. “Did the man who left you his
clothes and the barred silk handkerchief and the tight shoes leave you
the spoil of the murder?”
The men standing around had drawn off a little, and I saw the absolute
futility of any remonstrance. Have you ever seen a fly, who, in these
hygienic days, finding no cobwebs to entangle him, is caught in a sheet
of fly paper, finds himself more and more mired, and is finally quiet
with the sticky stillness of despair?
Well, I was the fly. I had seen too much of circumstantial evidence to
have any belief that the establishing of my identity would weigh much
against the other incriminating details. It meant imprisonment and
trial, probably, with all the notoriety and loss of practice they would
entail. A man thinks quickly at a time like that. All the probable
consequences of the finding of that pocket-book flashed through my mind
as I extended my hand to take it. Then I drew my arm back.
“I don’t want it,” I said. “Look inside. Maybe the other man took the
money and left the wallet.”
The conductor opened it, and again there was a curious surging forward
of the crowd. To my intense disappointment the money was still there.
I stood blankly miserable while it was counted out—five
one-hundred-dollar bills, six twenties, and some fives and ones that
brought the total to six hundred and fifty dollars.
The little man with the note-book insisted on taking the numbers of the
notes, to the conductor’s annoyance. It was immaterial to me: small
things had lost their power to irritate. I was seeing myself in the
prisoner’s box, going through all the nerve-racking routine of a trial
for murder—the challenging of the jury, the endless cross-examinations,
the alternate hope and fear. I believe I said before that I had no
nerves, but for a few minutes that morning I was as near as a man ever
comes to hysteria.
I folded my arms and gave myself a mental shake. I seemed to be the
center of a hundred eyes, expressing every shade of doubt and distrust,
but I tried not to flinch. Then some one created a diversion.
The amateur detective was busy again with the seal-skin bag,
investigating the make of the safety razor and the manufacturer’s name
on the bronze-green tie. Now, however, he paused and frowned, as though
some pet theory had been upset.
Then from a corner of the bag he drew out and held up for our
inspection some three inches of fine gold chain, one end of which was
blackened and stained with blood!
The conductor held out his hand for it, but the little man was not
ready to give it up. He turned to me.
“You say no watch was left you? Was there a piece of chain like that?”
“No chain at all,” I said sulkily. “No jewelry of any kind, except
plain gold buttons in the shirt I am wearing.”
“Where are your glasses?” he threw at me suddenly: instinctively my
hand went to my eyes. My glasses had been gone all morning, and I had
not even noticed their absence. The little man smiled cynically and
held out the chain.
“I must ask you to examine this,” he insisted. “Isn’t it a part of the
fine gold chain you wear over your ear?”
I didn’t want to touch the thing: the stain at the end made me shudder.
But with a baker’s dozen of suspicious eyes—well, we’ll say fourteen:
there were no one-eyed men—I took the fragment in the tips of my
fingers and looked at it helplessly.
“Very fine chains are much alike,” I managed to say. “For all I know,
this may be mine, but I don’t know how it got into that sealskin bag. I
never saw the bag until this morning after daylight.”
“He admits that he had the bag,” somebody said behind me. “How did you
guess that he wore glasses, anyhow?” to the amateur sleuth.
That gentleman cleared his throat. “There were two reasons,” he said,
“for suspecting it. When you see a man with the lines of his face
drooping, a healthy individual with a pensive eye,—suspect astigmatism.
Besides, this gentleman has a pronounced line across the bridge of his
nose and a mark on his ear from the chain.”
After this remarkable exhibition of the theoretical as combined with
the practical, he sank into a seat near-by, and still holding the
chain, sat with closed eyes and pursed lips. It was evident to all the
car that the solution of the mystery was a question of moments. Once he
bent forward eagerly and putting the chain on the window-sill,
proceeded to go over it with a pocket magnifying glass, only to shake
his head in disappointment. All the people around shook their heads
too, although they had not the slightest idea what it was about.
The pounding in my ears began again. The group around me seemed to be
suddenly motionless in the very act of moving, as if a hypnotist had
called “Rigid!” The girl in blue was looking at me, and above the din I
thought she said she must speak to me—something vital. The pounding
grew louder and merged into a scream. With a grinding and splintering
the car rose under my feet. Then it fell away into darkness.