“Apparently none.”
Evelyn hesitated and glanced around. The little path, where they sat, an off-shoot from the broad walks encircling Farragut’s statue, was deserted except for themselves.
“There is something I have wanted to speak to you about, and then I feared you would think me silly so I never mentioned it,” Evelyn commenced. “You recall that all the coroner found in the dead man’s pockets was a piece of string.”
“Yes.”
“The string was so odd—like a snake,” she shuddered. “It sort of twined in and out of the coroner’s fingers as he stood there, I mean just before Mrs. Ward fainted, and the string made a deep impression on me, so much so,” she added hesitatingly, “that when I saw that piece of string dangling from your coat sleeve yesterday morning it looked to me identically the same as that found in the dead man’s pocket.”
“It did?” Maynard straightened up.
“Yes. I meant to have spoken to you about it before, but at first it seemed so absurd.” Evelyn colored. “Thinking it over I grew more positive that the strings were alike. You haven’t, by chance, kept it?” eagerly. “You thrust it in your pocket.”
Maynard searched first one pocket and then the other. “My Yankee thrift makes me keep odds and ends,” he said. “Ah, here it is,” pulling it out of his trousers’ pocket.
Evelyn took the gayly colored piece of twine almost with repugnance. As it swayed in the gentle breeze it seemed, as she had said, snaky in appearance.
“Do you think it would help in identifying the dead man?” she asked. “The original piece, I mean.”