The Gold Bag [41]
It needed no detective instinct to see that the fortune of Joseph Crawford and its bestowment were matters of vital interest to him. But though his personal feelings on the subject might be distasteful to me, it was certainly part of my duty to aid in the search, and so with him I looked through the various drawers and filing cabinets. The papers representing or connected with the financial interests of the late millionaire were neatly filed and labelled; but in some parts of the desk we found the hodge-podge of personal odds and ends which accumulates with nearly everybody. Hall seemed little interested in those, but to my mind they showed a possibility of casting some light on Mr. Crawford's personal affairs. But among old letters, photographs, programs, newspaper clippings, and such things, there was nothing that seemed of the slightest interest, until at last I chanced upon a photograph that arrested my attention. "Do you know who this is?" I inquired. "No," returned Hall, with a careless glance at it; "a friend of Mr. Crawford's, I suppose." "More than a friend, I should judge," and I turned the back of the picture toward him. Across it was written, "with loving Christmas greetings, from M.S.P."; and it was dated as recently as the Christmas previous. "Well," said Hall, "Mr. Crawford may have had a lady friend who cared enough about him to send an affectionate greeting, but I never heard of her before, and I doubt if she is in any way responsible for the disappearance of this will." He went on searching through the desks, giving no serious heed to the photograph. But to me it seemed important. I alone knew of the visiting card in the gold bag. I alone knew that that bag belonged to a lady named Purvis. And here was a photograph initialed by a lady whose surname began with P, and who was unmistakably on affectionate terms with Mr. Crawford. To my mind the links began to form a chain; the lady who had sent her photograph at Christmas, and who had left her gold bag in Mr. Crawford's office the night he was killed, surely was a lady to be questioned. But I had not yet had a reply to my telegram to headquarters, so I said nothing to Hall on this subject, and putting the photograph in my pocket continued to assist him to look for the will, but without success. However, the discovery of the photograph had in a measure diverted my suspicions from Gregory Hall; and though I endeavored to draw him into general conversation, I did not ask him any definite questions about himself. But the more I talked with him, the more I disliked him: He not only showed a mercenary, fortune-hunting spirit, but he showed himself in many ways devoid of the finer feelings and chivalrous nature that ought to belong to the man about to marry such a perfect flower of womanhood as Florence Lloyd.
XI LOUIS'S STORY
After spending an evening in thinking over the situation and piecing together my clues, I decided that the next thing to be done was to trace up that transfer. If I could fasten that upon Gregory Hall, it would indeed be a starting point to work from. Although this seemed to eliminate Mrs. Purvis, who had already become a living entity in my mind, I still had haunting suspicions of Hall; and then, too, there was a possibility of collusion between these two. It might be fanciful, but if Hall and the Purvis woman were both implicated, Hall was quite enough a clever villain to treat the photograph lightly as he had done. And so the next morning, I started for the office of the trolley car company. I learned without difficulty that the transfer I had found, must have been given to some passenger the night of Mr. Crawford's death, but was not used. It had been issued after nine o'clock in the evening, somewhere on the line between New York and West Sedgwick. It was a transfer which entitled a passenger on that line to a trip on the branch line running through West Sedgwick, and the fact that it had not been used, implied either a negligent conductor or a decision on the part of the passenger not to take his intended ride. All
XI LOUIS'S STORY
After spending an evening in thinking over the situation and piecing together my clues, I decided that the next thing to be done was to trace up that transfer. If I could fasten that upon Gregory Hall, it would indeed be a starting point to work from. Although this seemed to eliminate Mrs. Purvis, who had already become a living entity in my mind, I still had haunting suspicions of Hall; and then, too, there was a possibility of collusion between these two. It might be fanciful, but if Hall and the Purvis woman were both implicated, Hall was quite enough a clever villain to treat the photograph lightly as he had done. And so the next morning, I started for the office of the trolley car company. I learned without difficulty that the transfer I had found, must have been given to some passenger the night of Mr. Crawford's death, but was not used. It had been issued after nine o'clock in the evening, somewhere on the line between New York and West Sedgwick. It was a transfer which entitled a passenger on that line to a trip on the branch line running through West Sedgwick, and the fact that it had not been used, implied either a negligent conductor or a decision on the part of the passenger not to take his intended ride. All