I must have stood gaping in the street like a countryman at a fair as I revolved these questions in my mind without getting an answer to them, for I was roused by a man bumping into me roughly.
I suspected that he had done it on purpose, but I begged his pardon and felt for my watch. I could find none of my personal property missing, but I noticed the fellow reeling back toward me, and doubled my fist with something of an intention to commit a breach of the peace if he repeated his trick. I thought better of it, and started by him briskly, when he spoke in a low tone:
“You'd better go to your room, Mr. Wilton.” He said something more that I did not catch, and, reeling on, disappeared in the crowd before I could turn to mark or question him.
I thought at first that he meant the room I had just left. Then it occurred to me that it was the room Henry had occupied—the room in which I had spent my first dreadful night in San Francisco, and had not revisited in the thirty hours since I had left it.
The advice suited my inclination, and in a few minutes I was entering the dingy building and climbing the worn and creaking stairs. The place lost its air of mystery in the broad sunshine and penetrating daylight, and though its interior was as gloomy as ever, it lacked the haunting suggestions it had borrowed from darkness and the night.
Slipped under the door I found two notes. One was from Detective Coogan, and read:
“Inquest this afternoon. Don't want you. Have another story. Do you want the body?”
The other was in a woman's hand, and the faint perfume of the first note I had received rose from the sheet. It read:
“I do not understand your silence. The money is ready. What is the matter?”
The officer's note was easy enough to answer. I found paper, and, assuring Detective Coogan of my gratitude at escaping the inquest, I asked him to turn the body over to the undertaker to be buried at my order.