During her speech her eyes had been upon the crudely built bookcase. Abruptly she drew nearer, forgetting apparently to continue what she had started. Her arm shot out, and she plucked, from the row of other books, the dainty, leather-bound copy of Kipling’s “Barrack-room Ballads”—the book given to Nash by the tramp in Central Park.
She opened it and rapidly thumbed the pages, stopping at the one across which was written a name.
“Where—where did you get this book?” Miss Breen demanded, her voice sounding husky.
Nash smiled. “Why, that book of poems? A panhandler gave it to me one day in Los Angeles,” he replied. “Said he had found it on a bench.”
“In—in Central Park?”
“Yes.”
Her face was curiously white and drawn now. Nash took a step nearer.
“Why are you so interested?” he asked.
“This book—belonged to my brother,” she wavered. “I gave it to him—it was the last thing I——”
“Your brother?” Nash was dumfounded. Many times since the first discovery of the name written in the little book he had turned to it curiously; pondered over it, wondered how and in what way Walter Trask’s volume had crossed the width of the continent to find a lodging place on a bench in Los Angeles. “Walter Trask—is your brother?” he said slowly.