interferes with the motive Miss Lloyd must have had if she is in any way guilty. She knew, or thought she knew, that the will was there, in her favor. She knew her uncle intended to revoke it and make another in her disfavor. I do not accuse her—I'm not sure I suspect her—I only say she had motive and opportunity."
As I walked away from Mr. Goodrich's office, those words rang in my mind, motive and opportunity. Truly they applied to Mr. Hall as well as to Miss Lloyd, although of course it would mean Hall's coming out from the city and returning during the night. And though this might have been a difficult thing to do secretly, it was by no means impossible. He might not have come all the way to West Sedgwick Station, but might have dropped off the train earlier and taken the trolley. The trolley! that thought reminded me of the transfer I had picked up on the grass plot near the office veranda. Was it possible that slip of paper was a clue, and pointing toward Hall?
Without definite hope of seeing Gregory Hall, but hopeful of learning something about him, I strolled back to the Crawford house. I went directly to the office, and by good luck found Gregory Hall there alone. He was still searching among the papers of Mr. Crawford's desk.
"Ah, Mr. Burroughs," he said, as I entered, "I'm glad to see you. If detectives detect, you have a fine chance here to do a bit of good work. I wouldn't mind offering you an honorarium myself, if you could unearth the will that has so mysteriously disappeared."
Hall's whole manner had changed. He had laid aside entirely the grave demeanor which he had shown at the funeral, and was again the alert business man. He was more than this. He was eager,—offensively so,—in his search for the will. 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.
Chapter 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 this was plausible, though a far from definite indication that Hall might have come out from New York by trolley, or part way by trolley, and though accepting a transfer on the West Sedgwick branch, had concluded not to use it. But the whole theory pointed equally as well to Mrs. Purvis, or indeed to the unknown intruder insisted upon by so many. I endeavored to learn something from certain conductors who brought their cars into West Sedgwick late at night, but it seemed they carried a great many passengers and of course could not identify a transfer, of which scores of duplicates had been issued.
Without much hope I interviewed the conductors of the West Sedgwick Branch Line. Though I could learn nothing definite, I fell into conversation with one of them, a young Irishman, who was interested because of my connection with the mystery.
"No, sir," he said, "I can't tell you anythin' about a stray transfer. But one thing I can tell you. That 'ere murder was committed of a Toosday night, wasn't it?"
"Yes," I returned.
"Well, that 'ere parlyvoo vally of Mr. Crawford's, he's rid, on my car 'most every Toosday night fer weeks and weeks. It's his night off. And last Toosday night he didn't ride with me. Now I don't know's that means anything, but agin it might."
It didn't seem to me that it meant much, for certainly Louis was not under the slightest suspicion. And yet as I came to think about it, if that had been Louis's transfer and if he had dropped it near the office veranda, he had lied when he said that he went round the other side of the house to reach the back entrance.
It was all very vague, but it narrowed itself down to the point that if that were Louis's transfer it could be proved; and if not it must be investigated further. For a trolley transfer, issued at a definite hour, and dropped just outside the scene of the crime was certainly a clue of importance.
I proceeded to the Crawford house, and though I intended to have a talk with Louis later, I asked first for Miss Lloyd. Surely, if I were to carry on my investigation of the case, in her interests, I must have a talk with her. I had not intruded before, but now that the funeral was over, the real work of tracking the criminal must be commenced, and as one of the principal characters in the sad drama, Miss Lloyd must play her part.
Until I found myself in her presence I had not actually realized how much I wanted this interview.
I was sure that what she said, her manner and her facial expression, must