Outwardly the book accorded ill with its surroundings. In that place of desolation and death, it typified the petty neatness of office processes. Properly placed, it should have been found on a desk, with pens, rulers, and other paraphernalia forming exact angles or parallels to it. It was a quarto, bound in marbled paper, with black leather over the hinges. No external label suggested its ownership or uses, but through one corner, blackened and formidable in its contrast to the peaceful purposes of the volume, a hole had been bored. The agency of perforation was obvious. A bullet had made it.
"Seen something of life, I reckon," said Trendon, as the captain turned the volume about slowly in his hands.
"And of death," returned Captain Parkinson solemnly. "Do you know, Trendon, I almost dread to open this."
"Pshaw!" returned the other. "What is it to us?"
He threw the cover back. Neatly lettered on the inside, in the fine and slightly angular writing characteristic of the Teutonic scholar, was the legend:
Karl Augustus Schermerhorn, 1409-1/2 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
The opposite page was blank. Captain Parkinson turned half a dozen leaves.
"German!" he cried, in a note of disappointment, "Can you read German script?"
"After a fashion," replied the other. "Let's see. Es wonnte sechs--und-- dreissig unterjacke," he read. "Why, blast it, was the man running a haberdashery? What have three dozen undershirts to do with this?"