“But the inside of the letter,” persisted Mr. Milford. “Didn’t you try to read that?”
“Course not,” said Georgina, her head indignantly high. “We only looked at each end of it to see if the person’s name was on it, but it began, ‘Dear friend,’ and ended, ‘Your grateful friend Dave.’”
“So the letter was addressed ‘_Mrs_.’” began Mr. Milford, musingly, “but was in a tobacco pouch. The first fact argues that a woman lost it, the last that it was a man.”
“But it didn’t smell of tobacco,” volunteered Georgina. “It was nice and clean only where Captain Kidd chewed the string.”
“I suppose it didn’t have any smell at all,” said Mr. Milford, not as if he expected anyone to remember, but that he happened to think of it. A slowly dawning recollection began to brighten in Georgina’s eyes.
“But it did have a smell,” she exclaimed. “I remember it perfectly well now. Don’t you know, Richard, when you were untying it at the top of the steps I said ’Phew! that makes me think of the liniment I bought from the wild-cat woman last night,’ I had to hold the bottle in my lap all the time we were at the moving picture show so I had a chance to get pretty well acquainted with that smell. And afterwards when we were wrapping the tin foil around the pouch, getting ready to bury it we both turned up our noses at the way it smelled. It seemed stronger when the sun shone on it.”
“The wild-cat woman,” repeated Mr. Milford, turning on Georgina. “Where was she? What did you have to do with her? Was the dog with you?”
Little by little they began to recall the evening, how they had started to the show with the Fayal family and turned aside to hear the patent medicine man sing, how Richard and Georgina had dared each other to touch the wild-cat’s tail through the bars, and how Georgina in climbing down from the wheel had stumbled over Captain Kidd whom they thought safely shut up at home.
“I believe we’ve found a clue,” said Mr. Milford at last. “If anybody in town had lost it there’d have been a notice put up in the post-office or the owner would have been around for you to cry it, Uncle Dan’l. But if it’s the wild-cat woman’s she probably did not discover her loss till she was well out of town, and maybe not until she reached her next stopping-place.”
“There’s been nothing of the sort posted on the bulletin board at the post-office,” said the old man. “I always glance in at it every morning.”