"How do I know! Course it got back there! Didn't Mary say—"
"Wait a minute," he put in. "How do you explain that, Cap'n?"
He was holdin' out somethin' that he'd took from his pocket. I grabbed it. 'Twas the regular receipt for that registered letter, and 'twas signed by Ichabod Hamilton, Junior.
I looked at that receipt and then at him. The paddin' in my head that, up to then, I'd complimented by callin' brains was whirlin' as if somebody was stirrin' it. I couldn't say a word. He laughed out loud.
"Don't have a fit, Cap'n Snow," he says. "It's simple enough. What you told me yesterday about the firm of Hamilton and Co. put me wise to the real answer to the riddle. I remembered that you pointed out Hamilton to me on the street when you and I were on the way to that hotel where we dined the noon of my arrival. He was on his way home then and he had been somewhere in this vicinity. There was a chance that he had been here at the office. This mornin' I went to his house and found him in bed. He was full of rheumatism and groans, but fuller still of the Evil One. I told him I knew he'd got his partner's registered letter—a bluff of course—and he didn't take the trouble to deny it. Seems Sim Kelley, with the mail box, passed him right here by the store platform. As they passed each other the letter fell from Kelley's overcoat pocket. The old man picked it up, intendin' to call to Kelley and give it back to him. When he saw the address he didn't."
He stopped then, waitin' for me to say somethin', I s'pose. But I couldn't say anything. My head was fuller of stir-about than ever, and I just stared at him with my mouth open.
"When he saw the address—and the name of the brokerage firm—he didn't. He took that letter home and opened it. You see, the old feller is nobody's fool, even if his rheumatism has kept him from active business for the last few months. He had suspected his nephew of speculatin' and here was the proof, a hundred shares of cheap minin' stock, and a letter sayin' that two hundred more had been bought on a margin. Young Hamilton had been stockjobbin' with the firm's money."
"My—soul!" was all I could say.
"Yes; well, old Ichabod is—ha! ha!—a queer character. His rheumatism had come back and he was waitin' to get better afore he took the matter up with his partner. 'What I'll say and do to that young pup is a well man's job,' he told me. We had a long talk and it ended in his sendin' for Ike. As soon as the young chap came I cleared out—that is, after I got this receipt signed. That bedroom was too sulphurous for me. I could smell brimstone even in the front yard. Cap'n, I guess you needn't worry about your rival candidate for postmaster. He's got troubles enough of his own."
I got up, slow and deliberate, from that shoe-case.