“Elwood is not so common a baptismal name, that there can be any doubt as to the person addressed.”
The other scraps, also written in pencil and by the same hand, contained but two or three disconnected words; but one of those words was Adelaide.
“I spent an hour and a half in the yards adjoining the station before I found those two bits,” explained the young lawyer with a simple earnestness not displeasing to the two seasoned men he addressed. “One was in hiding under a stacked-up pile of outgoing freight, and the other I picked out of a cart of stuff which had been swept up in the early morning. I offer them in corroboration of Mr. Ranelagh’s statement that the ‘Come!’ used in the partially consumed letter found in the clubhouse chimney was addressed to Miss Carmel Cumberland and not to Adelaide, and that the place of meeting suggested by this word was the station platform, and not the spot since made terrible by death.”
“You are acquainted with Miss Carmel Cumberland’s handwriting?”
“If I am not, the town is full of people who are. I believe these words to have been written by Carmel Cumberland.”
Mr. Fox placed the pieces back in their envelope and laid the whole carefully away.
“For a second time we are obliged to you,” said he.
“You can cancel the obligation,” was the quick retort, “by discovering the identity of the man who in derby hat and a coat with a very high collar, left the grounds of The Whispering Pines just as Mr. Ranelagh drove into them. I have no facilities for the job, and no desire to undertake it.”
He had endeavoured to speak naturally, if not with an off-hand air; but he failed somehow—else why the quick glance of startled inquiry which Dr. Perry sent him from under his rather shaggy eyebrows.
“Well, we’ll undertake that, too,” promised the district attorney.