For several minutes the scientist examined the fragment and then handed it back to the reporter.
"If one could establish some clear connection between that and the disappearance of the girl it might be valuable," he said. "As it is now, it means nothing. Any number of letters might be thrown into the waste-basket in the room the two girls occupied, therefore dismiss this for the moment."
"But isn't it possible----" Hatch began.
"Anything is possible, Mr. Hatch," retorted the other, belligerently. "You might take occasion to see the handwriting of St. George, the artist, and see if that is his--also look at Willis's. Even if it were Willis's, however, it may mean nothing in connection with this."
"But what could have happened to Miss Field?"
"Any one of fifty things," responded the other. "She might have fallen dead in the street and been removed to a hospital or undertaking establishment; she might have been arrested for shoplifting and given a wrong name; she might have gone mad and gone away; she might have eloped with another man; she might have committed suicide; she might have been murdered. The question is not what _could_ have happened, but what _did_ happen."
"Yes, I thoroughly understand that," Hatch replied, with a slight smile. "But still I don't see----"
"Probably you don't," snapped the other. "We'll take it for granted that she did none of these things, with the possible exception of eloping, killing herself, or was murdered. You are convinced that she did not elope. Yet you have only run down one possible end of this--that is, the possibility of her elopement with Willis. You don't believe she did elope with him. Well, why not with St. George?"
"St. George?" gasped Hatch. "A great artist elope with a shop-girl?"
"She was his ideal in a picture which you say is one of the greatest in the world," replied the other, testily. "That being true, it is perfectly possible that she was his ideal for a wife, isn't it?"