“T — A - G — ” A pause, and then: “A — ” The pale lips and dimming brain were trying to say something of such importance that it had to be spelled. The conductor wrote down the letters.
They were the last that Stephen Laird ever said. His mouth opened, and more blood gushed forth. His fingers twitched twice, and then stiffened.
A physician, hastily aroused by the observation-car porter, hurried in, dressed in trousers over pajamas. He bent over Laird a moment, and then straightened.
“He’s dead,” he said. “Murdered!”
THE conductor went through Laird’s pocket, looking for a railroad check. He found it, in an envelope marked Stephen Laird. He wrote the name on a sheet of paper, and then copied his notes. He read them to the doctor:
” ‘See in the box. Tag A.’ He tried to spell it. ‘T — A - G’ — then, he managed to gasp out the letter ‘A.’ That was all he was able to say.”
The brakeman went out on the platform where he had found Laird’s body. He called to the conductor, pointed to the blood-stained corner of the platform, and held up a piece of white paper.
“Right here, where I found — found him, there was this.”
The conductor took the fragment. It was part of the blotter that Laird had thrust into his pocket in the club car. This scrap bore only two letters: R and D, in reverse, the last letters of the murdered man’s signature.
The conductor did not realize this. He searched for the rest of the blotter, in vain.