“Yes, but I’m not ready for it.”
She dived again into the bag, and brought up another clipping.
“On the day that I had that inserted,” she said impressively, “this also appeared. They were in the same column.” She read the second clipping aloud, slowly, that I might gain all its significance:
“Lost on the night of Monday, November the second, between State Avenue and Park Avenue, possibly on an Eastern Line street car, a black handbag containing keys, car-tickets, private letters, and a small sum of money. Reward and no questions asked if returned to Daily News office.”
She passed the clipping to me and I compared the two. It looked strange, and I confess to a tingling feeling that coincidence, that element so much to be feared in any investigation, was not the solution here. But there was such a chance, and I spoke of it.
“Coincidence rubbish!” she retorted. “I am not through, my friend.”
She went down into the bag again, and I expected nothing less than the pocketbook, letters and all, to appear. But she dragged up, among a miscellany of handkerchiefs, a bottle of smelling-salts, and a few almonds, of which she was inordinately fond, an envelope.
“Yesterday,” she said, “I took a taxicab ride. You know my chair gets tiresome, occasionally. I stopped at the newspaper office, and found the bag had not been turned in, but that there was a letter for A 31.” She held out the envelope to me.
“Read it,” she observed. “It is a curious human document. You’ll probably be no wiser for reading it, but it shows one thing: We are on the track of something.”
I have the letter before me now. It is written on glazed paper, ruled with blue lines. The writing is of the flowing style we used to call Spencerian, and if it lacks character I am inclined to believe that its weakness is merely the result of infrequent use of a pen.