“Oh, you think, then, he was really the victim of some secret violence.”
“We have no proof of it,” I said. “On the contrary, we are assured that he died from natural causes. But the incident of the newspaper slip outweighs, in my mind, the doctor’s conclusions, and until the mystery surrounding that obituary notice has been satisfactorily explained by its author, I shall hold to the theory that your husband has been made away with in some strange and seemingly unaccountable manner, which it is our duty to bring to light.”
“You are right! You are right! Oh, John Graham!”
She was so carried away by this plain expression of my belief that she forgot the question I had put to her.
“You have not told whether or not you found anything among your husband’s effects that can explain this mystery,” I suggested.
She at once became attentive.
“Nothing,” said she: “his trunks were already packed and his bag nearly so. There were a few things lying about the room which were put into the latter, but I saw nothing but what was familiar to me among them; at least, I think not; perhaps we had better look through his trunk and see. I have not had the heart to open it since I came back.”
As this was exactly what I wished, I said as much, and she led me into a small room, against the wall of which stood a trunk with a traveling-bag on top of it. Opening the latter, she spread the contents out on the trunk.
“I know all these things,” she sadly murmured, the tears welling in her eyes.
“This?” I inquired, lifting up a bit of coiled wire with two or three little rings dangling from it.