Cunningham and her bag that she left in the train. But I will say this if you think I came out on that midnight train, go and ask the conductor. He knows me, and as I often do come out on that train, he may remember that I was not on it that night. And while you're about it, and since you consider that late newspaper a clue, also ask him who was on the train that might have come here afterward."
If this was bluffing, it was a very clever bluff, and magnificently carried out. Probably his hope was that the conductor could not say definitely as to Hall's presence on the late train, and any other names he might mention would only complicate matters.
But before I left I made one more attempt to get at this man's secret.
"Mr. Hall," I began, "I am not unfriendly. In fact, for Miss Lloyd's sake as well as your own, I should like to remove every shadow of suspicion that hovers near either or both of you."
"I know that," he said quickly. "Don't think I can't see through your `friendliness ' to Miss Lloyd! But be careful there, Mr.
Burroughs. A man does 'not allow too many `friendly' glances toward the girl he is engaged to."
So he had discovered my secret! Well, perhaps it was a good thing. Now I could fight for Florence more openly if necessary.
"You are right, Mr. Hall," I went on. "I hold Miss Lloyd in very high esteem, and I assure you, as man to man, that so long as you and she are betrothed, neither of you will have cause to look on me as other than a detective earnest in his work in your behalf."
"Thank you," said Hall, a little taken aback by my frankness.
I went away soon after that, and without quizzing him any further, for, though I still suspected him, I realized that he would never say anything to incriminate himself.
The theory that the criminal was some one who came in on that midnight train was plausible indeed; but what a scope it offered!
Why, a total stranger to Sedgwick might have come and gone, entirely unobserved, in the crowd.
It was with little hope, therefore, that I arranged for an interview with the conductor of the train.
He lived in Hunterton, a few stations from West Sedgwick, and, after ascertaining by telephone that he could see me the next day, I went to his house.
"Well, no," he replied, after thinking over my query a bit; "I don't think Mr. Hall came out from New York that night. I'm 'most sure he didn't, because he usually gives me his newspaper as he steps off the train, and I didn't get any `extra' that night."
Of course this wasn't positive proof that Hall wasn't there, so I asked ham to tell me all the West Sedgwick people that he did remember as being on his train that night.
He mentioned a dozen or more, but they were nearly all names unknown to me.
"Do you remember the Cunninghams being on the train?" I asked.
"Those Marathon Park people? Oh, yes. They were a gay party, - coming back from a theatre supper, I suppose. And that reminds me: Philip Crawford sat right behind the Cunninghams. I forgot him before. Well, I guess that's all the West Sedgwick people I can remember."
I went away not much the wiser, but with a growing thought that buzzed in my brain.
It was absurd, of course. But he had said Philip Crawford had sat right behind Mrs. Cunningham. How, then, could he help seeing the gold bag she left behind, when she got out at the station just before West Sedgwick? Indeed, who else could have seen it but the man in the seat directly behind? Even if some one else had picked it up and carried it from the car, Mr.
Crawford must have seen it.
Moreover, why hadn't he said he was on that train? Why conceal such a simple matter? Again, who had profited by the whole affair? And why had Gregory Hall said: "Ask the conductor who did get off that train?"
The rose petals were already explained by Florence. If, then, Philip Crawford had, much later, come to his brother's with the gold bag and the late newspaper, and had gone away and left them there, and had never told of all this, was there not a new direction in which to look?
But Philip Crawford! The dead man's own brother!