Did Clay Fairchild, puzzled over Miss Joyce's excited and unexpected appearance, go to Doctor Westbrook's office seeking enlightenment, and were his unspoken questions there answered by the dead body of Alberto de Sanchez?
And now there was a witness who could establish the identity of the unknown woman.
Possibly the last consideration had as much weight in influencing Mr. Converse to a decision which he made while riding back to the city, as the reasons therefor which he gave in his own mind; but, trifling as that decision may appear to be, it was destined to entail consequences of the utmost moment—it was the thread-like fissure in the dam. He shrank from hearing Joyce Westbrook's name on the lips of Slade; but yet, if that individual was possessed of such important evidence, it was clearly the Captain's duty to secure it as early as possible. However, he was beginning to feel acutely the need of both rest and nourishment; he realized, what with his own infirmity of speech and the other's deafness, the difficulties that would arise in the course of an interview with the abstracter; therefore he would defer his call until he had snatched a few hours' sleep, and could secure the aid of McCaleb to act as his mouthpiece.
He was ignorant alike of Merkel's ambition to engineer a coup, and the motives controlling the crusty Mr. Slade. Otherwise it is more than likely, after he received Mr. Follett's message, that he would have repaired with all haste to the offices of the Guaranty Abstract Company, instead of first eating a substantial breakfast, and afterward of composing his immense frame upon a certain leathern couch which formed a part of his office furniture at headquarters.
But such was the nature of his decision; and when he awoke late in the afternoon no earthly power could have changed the result of his procrastination.
At five o'clock Mr. Converse arose from his leathern couch, mentally decided to glimpse at the late afternoon mail, and then look up Mr. Slade.
But the mail brought one letter which, even before he opened it, banished all thought of the sour abstracter from his mind. The envelope bore in its upper left-hand corner the return address of "The Guadalupe Transportation and Construction Co.," and had been postmarked at Monterey, Mexico.
The missive was very long, and as it entered into a number of matters quite foreign to this narrative, it will be condensed. It purported to be written by one Morris A. King, now a civil engineer in the employ of a Mexican construction concern, and the author asserted that he and Clay Fairchild had been schoolmates, and that a warm friendship yet existed between them. The letter ran:
"My parents reside in New York and on the first of last October I had leave of absence to pay them a visit. On my return I shortened that visit by a day in order to surprise Clay, and I stopped with him two or three hours on November fourth." Here the reader's interest suddenly quickened. "The mysterious sketch of the dagger mentioned by the papers was made on that day solely for my benefit."
The writer went on to say that Clay had confided his literary ambitions to his friend, and that the latter had urged him to come with him to Mexico, "the land of romance, love, fighting, tinkling guitars, and sloe-eyed señoritas." He held out many inducements to Fairchild in the way of material for stories; but the young man persisted in his inability to accept the invitation.