As I read this heart rending missive my late patient’s case did not seem so mysterious. I do not hesitate to say, moreover, that the memory of his last horrible agonies was pleasanter to contemplate than it had been.
“The man who inspired that letter,” I exclaimed aloud, “never committed suicide. He was not man enough. That fellow died like a poisoned rat in a hole,—if the evidence counts for anything.”
Having thus become more reconciled to the death of the late Mr. Peyton, I was less inclined than ever to be in haste in promoting any legal intermeddling with what had begun to appear a just dispensation of Providence. But I was nevertheless determined to see the matter to its conclusion. I was bound to find the hand that had “poisoned the rat.” I could decide what course to pursue afterward. I was confident that I knew for whom I must look, but where? Where was “Julie?”
After a hurried breakfast I began my quest. As luck would have it I decided to visit the Emporium first. I confess that when I entered the colossal establishment and saw its large number of female employes I began to fear that, with only the given name of the person I was seeking and a mental reproduction of her photograph to guide me, my task was liable to be something like the proverbial search for the needle in the haystack.
For more than two hours I strolled about the Emporium, covertly studying the faces of the women clerks and affecting an indifference which I did not feel, without seeing any one who could by any possibility have been taken for the original of the picture. Black hair and dark eyes—the possessors of which were not seldom beautiful—were there in plenty, but none that could be compared with those I sought.
I was about to go to the office of the establishment to inquire there, under the pretext of seeking a witness of an accident case, when I caught sight of one of the floor walkers, a Mr. Courtney, who chanced to be an old patient of mine.
“Ah,” I thought, “here is some one who may help me.”
Mr. Courtney greeted me warmly, and replied courteously, when I asked for a private interview,
“Certainly, doctor, step this way.”
Having seated ourselves on a sofa in an out of the way corner of the store, I said,