With a feeling of lively anticipation, I entered the bath room. I had not forgotten that this room alone had been designated by a distinguishing mark on the chart which I had found while following the mysterious footprints. But I discovered nothing to justify my hopes. The place was monotonously like other bath rooms in which I had been. I gave it an exceptionally thorough overhauling, then went carefully over it once more—even resorting to my magnifying-glass from time to time—but all to no purpose; the room was discouragingly wanting in anything that might be regarded as a clew.
In the end I fell to musing over a bar of common laundry soap on the stationary wash-stand. It was impossible not to contrast this humble detergent—for it was of a bigness and coarse yellowness to suggest the largest possible quantity for the smallest possible price—with the dead man's wealth, and to wonder a little at such petty economies as were signified by it, by the paraffin candles, the absence of servants, and by some other details of the ménage which perhaps I have already mentioned.
I recalled, with a smile, that Burke had smelled of laundry soap, and that on the wash-stand in Maillot's room there had been no soap at all. Well, there are some queer ways of utilizing wealth; but I contend that, of all of them, to deny oneself the commonest comforts of existence is the queerest and the hardest to understand. A philosophy of living is involved utterly incomprehensible to me.
Passing through the bath room, I emerged upon the landing of the rear stairs. Across the landing was another small room, which contained, besides a dust-mantled sewing-machine, nothing but some broken and worn-out furniture.
I followed the stairway to the bottom, and about half-way down found a bit of flattened paraffin about the size of my thumb nail.
After re-ascending these stairs I stood once more looking idly down over the balustrade, going over in my mind the parts of the puzzle which had been set for me to bring together into an intelligible and perfectly rounded whole, and wondering what I would succeed in making of it all. For a while I was aware of a strange lack of confidence in myself, of a feeling of uncertainty. Had I been negligent in not arresting both Maillot and Burke? It seemed the simplest and most direct method of proceeding; it would be no difficult matter to fasten the crime on one or the other, or both of them; why should I go behind the few plain details which lay so invitingly before me?
Perhaps the intrusion of a pair of blue eyes into the midst of my cogitations had much to do with my irresolution. Somehow I was extremely desirous of winning their approval. The possibility that I might win more did not enter my thoughts, because, I reflected rather dismally, the owner of the blue eyes moved in a sphere in which I had neither part nor parcel.
Still, my determination to solve the mystery of Felix Page's death was inextricably interwoven with another determination to win one final friendly, commendatory look—perhaps a word or two, or even a warm hand-clasp—from Miss Genevieve Cooper.
How was I to do that? By fastening an odious crime upon her cousin's lover? I shrank from such an alternative. Heaven grant that so far I had not reasoned falsely.
It may seem a poor business thus to mix sentiment with one's humdrum daily affairs; but—well, and so it is. After mature reflection, I can think of but one extenuating plea: I was only twenty-six at the time.