“How could it get lost from the vestibule?”
“The fellow admitted leaving it somewhere outside the stateroom after taking it to the toilet with him.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” asked Jimmie, “that you bought the hand-bag the porter stole from the man lying here dead?”
“That’s a queer suggestion, don’t you know!” said the Englishman.
“Well, how did the porter come to have the bag to sell if he hadn’t picked it up somewhere on the train?”
“That’s a clever question!” asserted the Englishman. “But look here,” he went on, “why should a man like this one have a false shirt front and a false beard in his luggage?”
“I think I could tell you why if I tried very hard,” answered Jimmie, “but we’d better pass that up for the present.”
“Yes,” Ben said, “I think we’d better give this man decent burial, repair the Louise as far as possible, and start back to camp.”
“I don’t see how we’re going to open a grave,” Carl said.
“We can make a shallow one, I guess,” Ben answered, “and then use plenty of stones for covering. Of course we’ll notify the mounted police as soon as we get to a station, and they will undoubtedly take the body out. Somewhere, undoubtedly, this man had relatives and friends, and they ought to know the manner of his death.”