Prof. I. Noah Little, the conchologist, paid McCausland the honor of a call and even brought his whelk-shell with him. With this occult instrument at his ear he had been known to make the most remarkable prophecies, declaring to gullible girls the names of their future spouses, and even portending the great snowfall of May 21 in the year 1880.
As for suggestions by mail, the office porter's spine grew bent with emptying the waste-basket which received them. Hypnotism was the favorite explanation with a large majority of the correspondents, followed by a somnambulism and various ingenious theories of accident. The pope and the czar were named as authors, and the freemasons were accused in one epistle of a plot to burn up the ocean with some diabolical explosive, to procure which they had all sold their souls to the devil, though what this had to do with the Floyd case was a greater mystery than the fire itself.
Out of all this chaff the inspector sifted a solitary grain. One morning he was joking in the office with Hardy, Johnson and Smith, three of his brothers-in-buttons. Hardy handled sneak-thieves and shoplifters, Johnson swindlers of a higher order, such as confidence men, and Smith the gangs of forgers and counterfeiters. They were all, like McCausland, common-looking men. This enabled them to slouch through life quietly, taking observations by the way.
"Well, Dick," said Johnson, "I hear you've been appointed confessor-general to Col. Mainwaring's sinners."
This was received with a hearty laugh, for they were a jolly four, these men of iron.
"That arson case is a puzzler," put in Smith. "Why didn't you send a bottle of the smoke to Sherlock Holmes?"
"With a blank label," added Johnson, "for the incendiary's name."
"Would he notice such an A B C riddle?" laughed Hardy.
"A lady for Mr. McCausland," announced the mulatto policeman, and the brothers-in-buttons quickly found other business.