He proceeded to look up Mr. Hunt, and preferred his request that he be allowed to inspect the rooms of the late Mr. Fullerton, but he found that functionary disposed to make the most of the temporary importance which the tragedy had conferred upon him.
"Them rooms is locked up. The public ain't admitted. The police has took the key."
"But you have a duplicate key, you know."
"And what if I have?"
"Why, you could let me in for half an hour."
"What for should I do that? This ain't no public museum, and I ain't no public Information Bureau to answer all the fool questions that people as ain't got nothing else to do can think of asking."
"I dare say that people have been imposing on you," said Lyon, with that serious and sympathetic air which served him so well on occasion. "But that's the penalty which you have to pay for being a man of importance. I like to meet a man of your sort. You're not the kind to let every curiosity seeker in. But this is different. You know I am writing this case up for the News and I think I'll have to have your picture for the paper, with a little write-up. No reason why you shouldn't get something out of all this. You let me into those rooms for half an hour, and I'll see that you have a notice that your wife will cut out and frame."
He had his way in the end, of course, and Hunt, grumbling but gratified, took him up by the back stairs, admitted him, and locked him in, with the warning that he would come personally to let him out in half an hour.
Left alone, Lyon looked about him with a great deal of curiosity and interest. Fullerton was a sufficiently important person in himself to give interest to his rooms, apart from the accident that a mystery had settled down upon his death. And these were not the conventional rooms of the average well-regulated and commonplace man. There was a mingling of oriental luxury and slovenliness, of extravagance and threadbare carelessness, that was a curious index to the owner's mind. The first room was evidently a combined study and lounging room, for it contained a revolving book-case filled with law books, a large table with papers and books spread promiscuously upon it, a couch, several luxurious easy chairs, a curious oriental cabinet high upon the wall, a dilapidated rug in which Lyon caught his foot, and a table with all the paraphernalia of a smoker. The feature of the room that especially attracted his attention, however, was the pictures. These were not of the character that one would have expected to find in a lawyer's private study. Instead of the portraits of jurists and law-givers, the walls were adorned with pictures of ballet girls of varying degrees of audacity. Some were so extreme that Lyon was distinctly startled. From the pictures, his eye wandered to the book-case at the head of the couch. No law books here, where he threw himself down to smoke at his ease, but novels, French and English, at least equalling the pictures in audacity. Evidently Fullerton had not had the tastes or tendencies of a Galahad. He could hardly have received his clients in this telltale room. Yet the open law books on the table indicated that he did occasionally do some studying here. Lyon was struck with the title of the first book he saw, and still more so when he found that of the half dozen lying open or with markers in them on the table, all dealt with the same subject,--divorce. The reason seemed clear when he picked up the file of legal papers on the table and found them to be a complete transcript of the Vanderburg divorce case. Evidently, for some reason or other, that matter had been uppermost in his thoughts of late. As he put the papers down, a filmy, crumpled-up handkerchief on the table caught his eye. It called to his mind the handkerchief which Mrs. Broughton had pressed to her lips the evening before to conceal their nervous trembling, and he was not surprised, when he unfolded it, to find the initials "G.B." woven into the delicate embroidery.
"Well, what do you make of it?"