I hastily put my hand in my pocket, drew out the piece of metal which I had picked up in Creeveen Wood. It fitted the fracture perfectly!
For a moment I felt like one dazed, and then I began to look around the room as if in search of something, I knew not what. My eyes lighted on a portmanteau, bearing the initials “F.L.” “Frank L——, by all that’s wonderful,” said I to myself.
I flung myself undressed upon the bed. I couldn’t sleep. There was gas in the room, and I kept it burning all night.
When I met the landlady next morning I asked her, as if casually, who was the tenant of my room.
“Oh, Mr. L——,” she answered; “he’s been absent for some weeks, and may not return for some time. He often stays away for over a month.”
What was I to do? I had no doubt whatever I had found the assassin!
Was I to tell Gerald F——? Would he believe in my visions? Would he regard the piece of metal as a proof, and if he did believe it would he thank me for convicting his mother’s son of the crime?
No. I wouldn’t tell, at least until I had pursued the matter further. So the next day I determined to cause some privately conducted investigations to be made concerning the recent career of Frank L——, but before I had well set them on foot, and within a few days of my discovery in the seaside lodgings, came the news through the morning papers that the body of a man was found on the line between Salthill and Kingstown, and from papers on him it turned out that he was a Mr. Francis L——!
Gerald F——, I know, attended the funeral. A week subsequent to it came the information from the private inquiry office which I had set in motion that L—— had been paying attentions to Miss R—— in London, and her maid had stated that she believed he had made a proposal and had been rejected.