"You have nothing to do with that book," he said harshly. "If it's my name you are hunting for, Enoch Arden will do for my headstone. I have no friends to notify, and you will please me best if you bury me and forget about me, and particularly keep that name out of the papers. I have a right--" But the effort was too much. He gasped and fell back dead. Lyon had been so impressed by the stranger's peculiarly commanding personality that he had respected his wish to be left unidentified. He considered that the bare accident that he had stumbled upon the man's real name did not justify him in disregarding the owner's wish to keep it concealed, and he did not change his view when he saw that a bunch of newspaper clippings which had fallen out of the note-book related to the divorce granted to Grace Vanderburg. Lyon reviewed the situation as fully as it was known to him. Mrs. Vanderburg had secured a legal separation in the courts and had married again. The decree was based on the representation that William H. Vanderburg had deserted his wife and had been unheard of for over twelve years. Whether William Vanderburg had intended to make difficulties or not, Lyon had no means of guessing, but if he had, certainly his death had closed the incident for ever. The unintentional witness slipped the old note-book into his own pocket and allowed the railroad company to bury the body of "One unidentified man."
That was all three years in the past, or thereabouts, and now he had been brought most curiously across the path of that dead man's former wife. Truly, the Goddess of Accident was throwing her shuttle with what almost looked like design. Was his imagination running wild in suggesting to him a possible identity between this woman of uncommon experience, wealth, and social standing, and the woman who had fled in a panic from the scene of Fullerton's murder? He felt that he was in danger of making himself absurd by harboring such a thought for a moment, but with the desire which was characteristic of him to get at the bottom facts, he went directly to the office of the clerk of the Circuit Court.
"I want to verify some dates in connection with that Vanderburg divorce case," he said, to the lounging official in charge. "Would it be possible for me to look at the record?"
"I have the papers right here, as it happens," the clerk answered. "Curious you should call for them. I made a transcript of that case for Warren Fullerton a week or two ago."
"Did you, really?" Lyon exclaimed in surprise. "What did he want it for?"
"Dunno. He was Mrs. Vanderburg's attorney, you know."
"I didn't remember," said Lyon thoughtfully. It was beginning to look interesting. There was, then, an established relation of some sort between Mrs. Broughton and Fullerton. Just what did it mean?
He felt that he was on the way to finding out when he reached his rooms that evening, for he found awaiting him a special delivery letter containing the following somewhat imperiously worded invitation:
"Mrs. Woods Broughton will be greatly indebted to Mr. Percy Lyon if he can call upon her this evening. She appreciates his courtesy in respecting her wish that her visit should not be made a matter of public gossip. He will add to her obligations by giving her an opportunity for a personal interview."
Lyon got into his evening clothes with a jubilation that does not always accompany an evening call. He felt that the fates were playing into his hands.