The Gold Bag

XV. THE PHOTOGRAPH EXPLAINED

That evening I went to see Philip Crawford. As one of the executors of his late brother's estate, and as probable heir to the same, he was an important personage just now.

He seemed glad to see me, and glad to discuss ways and means of running down the assassin. Like Mr. Porter, he attached little importance to the gold bag.

“I can't help thinking it belongs to Florence,” he said. “I know the girl so well, and I know that her horrified fear of being in any way connected with the tragedy might easily lead her to, disown her own property, thinking the occasion justified the untruth. That girl has no more guilty knowledge of Joseph's death than I have, and that is absolutely none. I tell you frankly, Mr. Burroughs, I haven't even a glimmer of a suspicion of any one. I can't think of an enemy my brother had; he was the most easy-going of men. I never knew him to quarrel with anybody. So I trust that you, with your detective talent, can at least find a clue to lead us in the right direction.”

“You don't admit the gold bag as a clue, then?” I asked.

“Nonsense! No! If that were a clue, it would point to some woman who came secretly at night to visit Joseph. My brother was not that sort of man, sir. He had no feminine acquaintances that were unknown to his relatives.”

“That is, you suppose so.”

“I know it! We have been brothers for sixty years or more, and whatever Joseph's faults, they did not lie in that direction. No, sir; if that bag is not Florence's, then there is some other rational and commonplace explanation of its presence there.”

“I'm glad to hear you speak so positively, Mr. Crawford, as to your brother's feminine acquaintances. And in connection with the subject, I would like to show you this photograph which I found in his desk.”

I handed the card to Mr. Crawford, whose features broke into a smile as he looked at it.

“Oh, that,” he said; “that is a picture, of Mrs. Patton.” He looked at the picture with a glance that seemed to be of admiring reminiscence, and he studied the gentle face of the photograph a moment without speaking.

Then he said, “She was beautiful as a girl. She used to be a school friend of both Joseph and myself.”

“She wrote rather an affectionate message on the back,” I observed.

Mr. Crawford turned the picture over.

“Oh, she didn't send this picture to Joseph. She sent it to my wife last Christmas. I took it over to show it to Joseph some months ago, and left it there without thinking much about it. He probably laid it in his desk without thinking much about it, either. No, no, Burroughs, there is no romance there, and you can't connect Mrs. Patton with any of your detective investigations.”

“I rather thought that, Mr. Crawford; for this is evidently a sweet, simple-minded lady, and more over nothing has turned up to indicate that Mr. Crawford had a romantic interest of any kind.”

“No, he didn't. I knew Joseph as I know myself. No; whoever killed my brother, was a man; some villain who had a motive that I know nothing about.”

“But you were intimately acquainted with your brother's affairs?”

“Yes, that is what proves to me that whoever this assassin was, it was some one of whose motive I know nothing. The fact that my brother was murdered, proves to me that my brother had an enemy, but I had never suspected it before.”

“Do you know a Mrs. Egerton Purvis?”

I flung the question at him, suddenly, hoping to catch him unawares. But he only looked at me with the blank expression of one who hears a name for the first time.

“No,” he answered, “I never heard of her. Who is she?”

“Well, when I was hunting through that gold-mesh bag, I discovered a lady's visiting card with that name on it. It had slipped between the linings, and so had not been noticed before.”

To my surprise, this piece of information seemed to annoy Mr. Crawford greatly.

“No!” he exclaimed. “In the bag? Then some one has put it there! for I looked over all the bag's contents myself.”

“It was between the pocket and the lining,” said I; “it is there still, for as I felt sure no one else would discover it, I left it there. Mr. Goodrich has the bag.”

“Oh, I don't want to see it,” he exclaimed angrily. “And I tell you anyway, Mr. Burroughs, that bag is worthless as a clue. Take my advice, and pay no further attention to it.”

I couldn't understand Mr. Crawford's decided attitude against the bag as a clue, but I dropped the subject, for I didn't wish to tell him I had made plans to trace up that visiting card.

“It is difficult to find anything that is a real clue,” I said.

“Yes, indeed. The whole affair is mysterious, and, for my part, I cannot form even a conjecture as to who the villain might have been. He certainly left no trace.”

“Where is the revolver?” I said, picturing the scene in imagination.

Philip Crawford started as if caught unawares.

“How do I know?” he cried, almost angrily. “I tell you, I have no suspicions. I wish I had! I desire, above all things, to bring my brother's murderer to justice. But I don't know where to look. If the weapon were not missing, I should think it a suicide.”

“The doctor declares it could not have been suicide, even if the weapon had been found near him. This they learned from the position of his arms and head.”

“Yes, yes; I know it. It was, without doubt, murder. But who—who would have a motive?”

“They say,” I observed, “motives for murder are usually love, revenge, or money.”

“There is no question of love or revenge in this instance. And as for money, as I am the one who has profited financially, suspicion should rest on me.”

“Absurd!” I said.

“Yes, it is absurd,” he went on, “for had I desired Joseph's fortune, I need not have killed him to acquire it. He told me the day before he died that he intended to disinherit Florence, and make me his heir, unless she broke with that secretary of his. I tried to dissuade him from this step, for we are not a mercenary lot, we Crawfords, and I thought I had made him reconsider his decision. Now, as it turns out, he persisted in his resolve, and was only prevented from carrying it out by this midnight assassin. We must find that villain, Mr. Burroughs! Do not consider expense; do anything you can to track him down.”

“Then, Mr. Crawford,” said I, “if you do not mind the outlay, I advise that we send for Fleming Stone. He is a detective of extraordinary powers, and I am quite willing to surrender the case to him.”

Philip Crawford eyed me keenly.

“You give up easily, young man,” he said banteringly.

“I know it seems so,” I replied, “but I have my reasons. One is, that Fleming Stone makes important deductions from seemingly unimportant clues; and he holds that unless these clues are followed immediately, they are lost sight of and great opportunities are gone.”

“H'm,” mused Philip Crawford, stroking his strong, square chin. “I don't care much for these spectacular detectives. Your man, I suppose, would glance at the gold bag, and at once announce the age, sex, and previous condition of servitude of its owner.”

“Just what I have thought, Mr. Crawford. I'm sure he could do just that.”

“And that's all the good it would do! That bag doesn't belong to the criminal.”

“How do you know?”

“By common-sense. No woman came to the house in the dead of night and shot my brother, and then departed, taking her revolver with her. And again, granting a woman did have nerve and strength enough to do that, such a woman is not going off leaving her gold bag behind her as evidence!”

This speech didn't affect me much. It was pure conjecture. Women are uncertain creatures, at best; and a woman capable of murder would be equally capable of losing her head afterward, and leaving circumstantial evidence behind her.

I was sorry Mr. Crawford didn't seem to take to the notion of sending for Stone. I wasn't weakening in the case so far as my confidence in my own ability was concerned; but I could see no direction to look except toward Florence Lloyd or Gregory Hall, or both. And so I was ready to give up.

“What do you think of Gregory Hall?” I said suddenly.

“As a man or as a suspect?” inquired Mr. Crawford.

“Both.”

“Well, as a man, I think he's about the average, ordinary young American, of the secretary type. He has little real ambition, but he has had a good berth with Joseph, and he has worked fairly hard to keep it. As a suspect, the notion is absurd. He wasn't even in West Sedgwick.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he went away at six that evening, and was in New York until nearly noon the next day.”

“How do you know?”

Philip Crawford stared at me.

“He says so,” I went on; “but no one can prove his statement. He refuses to say where he was in New York, or what he did. Now, merely as a supposition, why couldn't he have come out here—say on the midnight train—called on Mr. Joseph Crawford, and returned to New York before daylight?”

“Absurd! Why, he had no motive for killing Joseph.”

“He had the same motive Florence would have. He knew of Mr. Crawford's objection to their union, and he knew of his threat to change his will. Mr. Hall is not blind to the advantages of a fortune.”

“Right you are, there! In fact, I always felt he was marrying Florence for her money. I had no real reason to think this, but somehow he gave me that impression.”

“Me, too. Moreover, I found a late extra of a New York paper in Mr. Crawford's office. This wasn't on sale until about half past eleven that night, so whoever left it there must have come out from the city on that midnight train, or later.”

A change came over Philip Crawford's face. Apparently he was brought to see the whole matter in a new light.

“What? What's that?” he cried excitedly, grasping his chair-arms and half rising. “A late newspaper! An extra!”

“Yes; the liner accident, you know.”

“But—but—Gregory Hall! Why man, you're crazy! Hall is a good fellow. Not remarkably clever, perhaps, and a fortune-hunter, maybe, but not—surely not a murderer!”

“Don't take it so hard, Mr. Crawford,” I broke in. “Probably. Mr. Hall is innocent. But the late paper must have been left there by some one, after, say, one o'clock.”

“This is awful! This is terrible!” groaned the poor man, and I couldn't help wondering if he had some other evidence against Hall that this seemed to corroborate.

Then, by an effort, he recovered himself, and began to talk in more normal tones.

“Now, don't let this new idea run away with you, Mr. Burroughs,” he said. “If Hall had an interview with my brother that night, he would have learned from him that he intended to make a new will, but hadn't yet done so.”

“Exactly; and that would constitute a motive for putting Mr. Crawford out of the way before he could accomplish his purpose.”

“But Joseph had already destroyed the will that favored Florence.”

“We don't know that,” I responded gravely. “And, anyway, if he had done so, Mr. Hall didn't know it. This leaves his motive unchanged.”

“But the gold bag,” said Mr. Crawford, apparently to get away—from the subject of Gregory Hall.

“If, as you say,” I began, “that is Florence's bag—”

I couldn't go on. A strange sense of duty had forced those words from me, but I could say no more.

Fleming Stone might take the case if they wanted him to; or they might get some one else. But I could not go on, when the only clues discoverable pointed in a way I dared not look.

Philip Crawford was ghastly now. His face was working and he breathed quickly.

“Nonsense, Dad!” cried a strong, young voice, and his son, Philip, Jr., bounded into the room and grasped his father's hands. “I overheard a few of your last words, and you two are on the wrong track. Florrie's no more mixed up in that horrible business than I am. Neither is Hall. He's a fool chap, but no villain. I heard what you said about the late newspaper, but lots of people come out on that midnight train. You may as well suspect some peaceable citizen coming home from the theatre, as to pick out poor Hall, without a scrap of evidence to point to him.”

I was relieved beyond all words at the hearty assurance of the boy, and I plucked up new courage. Apprehension had made me faint-hearted, but if he could show such flawless confidence in Florence and her betrothed, surely I could do as much.

“Good for you, young man!” I cried, shaking his hand. “You've cheered me up a lot. I'll take a fresh start, and surely we'll find out something. But I'd like to send for Stone.”

“Wait a bit, wait a bit,” said Mr. Crawford. “Phil's right; there's no possibility of Florrie or Hall in the matter. Leave the gold bag, the newspapers, and the yellow posies out of consideration, and go to work in some sensible way.”

“How about Mr. Joseph's finances?” I asked. “Are they in satisfactory shape?”

“Never finer,” said Philip Crawford. “Joseph was a very rich man, and all due to his own clever and careful investments. A bit of a speculator, but always on the right side of the market. Why, he fairly had a corner in X.Y. stock. Just that deal—and it will go through in a few days—means a fortune in itself. I shall settle that on Florence.”

“Then you think the will will never be found?” I said.

Mr. Crawford looked a little ashamed, as well he might, but he only said,

“If it is, no one will be more glad than I to see Florrie reinstated in her own right. If no will turns up, Joe's estate is legally mine, but I shall see that Florence is amply provided for.”

He spoke with a proud dignity, and I was rather sorry I had caught him up so sharply.

I went back to the inn, and, after vainly racking my brain over it all for a time, I turned in, but to a miserably broken night's rest.