“We shall, I hope, discover that in due course,” he answered. “Let’s finish these investigations before discussing our next move,” and he continued, carefully placing back the letters in the secret drawers, now and then pausing to re-read one which chanced to attract his attention.
“Look at this,” he said, passing one over to me after he had glanced at it.
It was written on pale green paper in a fine fashionable woman’s hand, a few brief lines, which ran:—
“My dear Eva,—I could not come to-day, but shall be there this evening. Everything is complete. When the truth becomes known the discovery will, I anticipate, startle the world. It must, for reasons you know, remain a strict secret. Do not breathe a word to a soul.—Yours ever.
“Anna.”
“That may refer to the invention we found in the laboratory; a scientific discovery which no one has come forward to claim. But who, I wonder, is Anna?”
“She might be the dead woman,” Boyd suggested.
“True,” I agreed. “So she might.”
During fully half an hour we still remained in that small cosy boudoir, which seemed to be Eva’s own room, examining everything carefully and taking the utmost precaution to replace everything exactly as we found it. In this Boyd displayed real genius. Whatever was moved he rearranged it with an exactness little short of astounding. His astuteness was remarkable. Nothing escaped him, now that he was on the trail.
Yet, as I wandered about, examining things here and there, I could not repress a feeling of reproach, for had I not, after all, assisted in this secret search which had resulted so disastrously for the strange, mysterious woman I so dearly loved? She was now under the suspicion of the police. They would keep her under surveillance, for the evidence we had already obtained was sufficient to induce any magistrate to grant a warrant for her arrest. A sudden sense of a vast, immeasurable loss fell upon me.