"Oh, that's right! I had forgotten," she answered. "Try to think now, judge—when my mother refused to let you go farther with your plan that night at her house, what did you do with the paper?"
"I shoved it out of sight quick ez ever I could. I recall that much anyway."
"Did you by any chance put it in your pocket?"
"Well, by Nathan Bedford Forrest!" he exclaimed. "I believe that's purzackly the very identical thing I did do. And bein' a careless old fool, I left it there instid of tearin' it up or burnin' it, and then I went on home and plum' furgot it wuz still there—not that I now regret havin' done so, seein' whut to-night's outcome is."
"And did your servant, after you were gone, send the suit you had worn that night downtown to be cleaned or repaired? Or do you know about that?"
"I suspicion that he done that very thing," he said, a light beginning to break in upon him. "Jeff is purty particular about keepin' my clothes in fust-rate order. He aims fur them to be in good condition when he decides it's time to confiscate 'em away frum me and start in wearin' 'em himself. Yessum, my Jeff's mighty funny that way. And now, come to think of it, I do seem to reckerlect that I spilt a lot of ink on 'em that same night."
"Well, then, the mystery is no mystery at all," she said. "On that very same day—the day your darky sent your clothes to the cleaner's—I had two of Dallam's suits sent down to be pressed. That little man at the tailor shop—Pedaloski—found this paper crumpled up in your pocket and took it out and then later forgot where he had found it. So, as I understand, he tried to read it, seeking for a clue to its ownership. He can't read much English, you know, so probably he has had no idea then or thereafter of the meaning of it; but he did know enough English to make out the name of Wybrant. Look at it and you'll see my name occurs twice in it, but your name does not occur at all. So don't you see what happened—what he did? Thinking the paper must have come from one of my husband's pockets, he smoothed it out as well as he could and folded it up and pinned it to the sleeve of Dallam's blue serge and sent it here. My maid found it when she was undoing the bundle before hanging up the clothes in Dallam's closet, and she brought it to me, thinking, I suppose, it was a bill from the cleaner's shop, and I read it. Simple enough explanation, isn't it, when you know the facts?"
"Simple," he agreed, "and yit at the same time sort of wonderful too. And whut did you do when you read it?"
"I was stunned at first. I tried at first not to believe it. But I couldn't deceive myself. Something inside of me told me that it was true—every word of it. I suppose it was the woman in me that told me. And somehow I knew that you had written it, although really that part was not so very hard a thing to figure out, considering everything. And somehow—I can't tell you why though—I was morally sure that after you had written it some other person had forbidden your making use of it in any way, and instinctively—anyhow, I suppose you might say it was by instinct—I knew that it had reached me, of all persons, by accident and not by design.