"This bears it out, too," he said.
O'Mally looked at it, and snapped the elastic back on the documents he'd been going over.
"From what I've seen here," he said, "Sammis was the man Ford was with in the real-estate business. These are all contracts, bills and some correspondence, the records of a small venture that went to smash," he pushed the roll back in its pigeonhole—"not another thing."
"There's not another thing in the room," I answered, "except two novels and a stack of New York papers on the floor there by the bureau. Hist! quiet!"
There were feet coming up the stairs. In a twinkling everything was as it had been, Babbitts and O'Mally withdrew to the window and I went out to see who was coming. It was Miss Graves and the doctor.
I explained the situation and found the doctor brusquely business-like and matter-of-fact. It was what might have been expected. When he had been called in that morning he had found Mr. Sammis a very sick man, suffering from angina pectoris and a general condition of debility and exhaustion. He had asked him if he had been subjected to any recent exertion or strain but been told no other than a trip the day before to Washington. Miss Graves said it was undoubtedly this trip that had done the damage. He had been well when he started on Tuesday morning, but on returning twenty-four hours later had been so weak and enfeebled that one of the other lodgers had had to assist him to his room. An examination proved that he had been dead some hours. Who his relations were or where he came from Miss Graves had no idea and would turn the matter over to the authorities.
It was close on midnight when we left, and there being no vehicle in sight we walked up the street. The moon was as bright as day, and, swinging along between those two lines of black houses, with here and there a light shining yellow in an upper window, we were silent, each occupied by his own thoughts.
I could guess those of the other two—Babbitts' chagrin at once again losing his big story, O'Mally's sullen indignation at having followed a clue that led to such a blind alley. But their disappointment and bitterness were nothing to mine. All my hopes gone again, and this last puzzle helping in no way, in no way as I then counted help.
[CHAPTER XIII]
JACK TELLS THE STORY