[CHAPTER XXII]
Although it was nearly three before Lyon went to sleep, he awoke the next morning earlier than usual and lay for some time figuring on the problem that possessed his mind before he thought of such a thing as dressing. He must see Howell and acquaint him with the strange developments of the night before as soon as possible, but Howell was old-fashioned, and he kept no telephone at his residence, for the express purpose of warding off the intrusion of business matters upon his hours at home. It was useless, therefore, to try to communicate with him before he reached his office, which would be at ten precisely.
While Lyon lay speculating on the situation, his eye fell upon the knotted handkerchief containing the booty which he had brought away from his raid upon Fullerton's room last night. The pressing incidents that had followed had put it for the time completely out of his mind. He sprang from the bed to examine it.
It was a curious record of a curious form of villainy that the little package revealed. The notes were all from women, who, by fault or fortune, had given him some hold upon their fears. Evidently the phase of Fullerton's nature revealed by the decadent literature and pictures in his room had had dark and complex ramifications in his career. The rule of terror which he had held over Edith Wolcott and Mrs. Broughton was, it would seem, only an instance of the methods by which, for the sake of money or malice or for pure delight in deviltry, he had made himself master of the secret history of women, and had used his knowledge to keep them trembling under his lash.
Lyon soon found to his relief that it was not necessary for him to read the whole of a letter to classify it, and he conscientiously averted his eyes from the signatures. What an oppression must have lifted from the face of nature when this man was dead! The man must have possessed the fascination and the venom of a cobra. Lyon used up a box of matches burning the telltale notes over his ash-receiver, and felt that if he should have failed in everything else, it would have been worth all to save this package of pitiful secrets from the cold official eye of Bede.
Two letters only he saved from the cleansing flame. They were from William Vanderburg and contained the information which had enabled Fullerton to terrorize Mrs. Broughton. These he kept to turn over to Broughton, and with them he placed the old note-book of Vanderburg's which he had taken from the pocket of the dying man. It was a curious fact that the two tangled threads of that story should have come into his hands and that chance should have brought his path and Mrs. Broughton's again together.
On his way downstairs, an impulse not wholly devoid of mischief sent him to the 'phone. If it was too early to talk to Howell, he could at any rate get Bede on the line,--and he did.
"Hello, Mr. Bede," he said, respectfully, "This is Lyon, of the News. Any new developments in the Lawrence case?"
"I think I'd better ask you that question," said Bede, somewhat drily.
"Oh, I mean authentic information, not newspaper imagination," protested Lyon.