“What!” I wheeled about and looked at the case on the chair. It was black and had once been shiny. It surely looked like mine, scratches and all. But wait—what was that gouge in the fabric near the hinge? I didn’t remember that.
Then Eve did a funny thing. She leant over and sniffed it. “Tobacco!” she exclaimed.
I went to sniff too; the odor was unmistakable. I took the case up and felt its weight again. “I remember thinking it was awfully heavy on the way from the station,” I mused. I was looking the case over more carefully now and the more I looked, the more unfamiliar it became. Could it be possible that Eve was right and that somehow or other I’d contrived to walk off with somebody else’s baggage? I could not understand it.
“But how could it have happened?” I cried. “I had it with me all the way on the train and in the station in Boston and on the bus after we left Berkshire Plains.”
Eve had dropped onto an old sea chest which stood under the window. She seemed to be thinking deeply. Finally her face lighted up. “I’ve got it!” she cried. “’Member that little, bow-legged man in the funny clothes who stopped the bus out in the country quite a while after we left Berkshire Plains? It wasn’t even at a crossroads and I said, ‘How convenient!’ or something.”
I nodded. I did remember the man. He had taken a seat just in front of us and, having nothing better to do, I had observed him rather particularly.
Eve was going on. “He had a suitcase, a black one like this. He must have placed it in the aisle next yours and when you got out—don’t you see—you simply picked up his instead of yours.”
“Of all the imbecile performances!” I cried.
Eve grinned impishly. “Oh, you can laugh!” I stormed. “But I’d like to have you tell me what I’m going to do now?”
“Wonder what’s in it?” Eve’s curiosity, I’ve frequently told her, will get her into trouble some day. She had taken up the case and was shaking it gently. “Not quite heavy enough for a bootlegger’s,” she mused, “still pretty full of something.”