She stopped here, moved by emotions readily to be understood. Then with quick impetuosity she caught up the thread of her story and went on.
“That was six months ago; and again I forgot. My mother died and my husband soon absorbed my every thought. How could I dream that this man, who was little more than a memory to me and scarcely that, was secretly planning mischief against me? Yet this scrap about which we have talked so much may have been the work of his hands; and even my husband’s death–”
She did not finish, but her face, which was turned towards me, spoke volumes.
“Your husband’s death shall be inquired into,” I assured her. And she, exhausted by the excitement of her discoveries, asked that she might be excused from further discussion of the subject at that time.
As I had no wish, myself, to enter any more fully into the matter just then, I readily acceded to her request, and the pretty widow left me.
II
Obviously the first fact to be settled was whether Mr. Holmes had died from purely natural causes. I accordingly busied myself the next few days with this question, and was fortunate enough to so interest the proper authorities that an order was issued for the exhumation and examination of the body.
The result was disappointing. No traces of poison were to be, found in the stomach nor was there to be seen on the body any mark of violence, with the exception of a minute prick upon one of his thumbs.
This speck was so small that it escaped every eye but my own.
The authorities assuring the widow that the doctor’s certificate given her in Philadelphia was correct, he was again interred. But I was not satisfied; neither do I think she was. I was confident that his death was not a natural one, and entered upon one of those secret and prolonged investigations which have constituted the pleasure of my life for so many years. First, I visited the Colonnade in Philadelphia, and being allowed to see the room in which Mr. Holmes died, went through it carefully. As it had not been used since that time I had some hopes of coming upon a clue.
But it was a vain hope and the only result of my journey to this place was the assurance I received that the gentleman had spent the entire evening preceding his death, in his own room, where he had been brought several letters and one small package, the latter coming by mail. With this one point gained—if it was a point—I went back to New York.
Calling on Mrs. Holmes, I asked her if, while her husband was away she had sent him anything besides letters, and upon her replying to the contrary, requested to know if in her visit to Philadelphia she had noted among her husband’s effects anything that was new or unfamiliar to her, “For he received a package while there,” I explained, “and though its contents may have been perfectly harmless, it is just as well for us to be assured of this, before going any further.”
“Oh, you think, then, he was really the victim of some secret violence.”
“We have no proof of it,” I said. “On the contrary, we are assured that he died from natural causes. But the incident of the newspaper slip outweighs, in my mind, the doctor’s conclusions, and until the mystery surrounding that obituary notice has been satisfactorily explained by its author, I shall hold to the theory that your husband has been made away with in some strange and seemingly unaccountable manner, which it is our duty to bring to light.”
“You are right! You are right! Oh, John Graham!”
She was so carried away by this plain expression of my belief that she forgot the question I had put to her.
“You have not told whether or not you found anything among your husband’s effects that can explain this mystery,” I suggested.
She at once became attentive.
“Nothing,” said she: “his trunks were already packed and his bag nearly so. There were a few things lying about the room which were put into the latter, but I saw nothing but what was familiar to me among them; at least, I think not; perhaps we had better look through his trunk and see. I have not had the heart to open it since I came back.”
As this was exactly what I wished, I said as much, and she led me into a small room, against the wall of which stood a trunk with a traveling-bag on top of it. Opening the latter, she spread the contents out on the trunk.
“I know all these things,” she sadly murmured, the tears welling in her eyes.
“This?” I inquired, lifting up a bit of coiled wire with two or three little rings dangling from it.
“No; why, what is that?”
“It looks like a puzzle of some kind.”
“Then it is of no consequence. My husband was forever amusing himself over some such contrivance. All his friends knew how well he liked these toys and frequently sent them to him. This one evidently reached him in Philadelphia.”
Meanwhile I was eying the bit of wire curiously. It was undoubtedly a puzzle, but it had appendages to it that I did not understand.
“It is more than ordinarily complicated,” I observed, moving the rings up and down in a vain endeavor to work them off.
“The better he would like it,” said she.
I kept on working with the rings. Suddenly I gave a painful start. A little prong in the handle of the toy had started out and pricked me.
“You had better not handle it,” said I, and laid it down. But the next minute I took it up again and put it in my pocket. The prick made by this treacherous bit of mechanism was in or near the same place on my thumb as the one I had noticed on the hand of the deceased Mr. Holmes.
There was a fire in the room, and before proceeding further, I cauterized that prick with the end of a red-hot poker. Then I made my adieux to Mrs. Holmes and went immediately to a chemist friend of mine.
“Test the end of this bit of steel for me,” said I. “I have reason to believe it carries with it a deadly poison.”
He took the toy, promised to subject it to every test possible and let me know the result. Then I went home. I felt ill, or imagined that I did, which under the circumstances was almost as bad.
Next day, however, I was quite well, with the exception of a certain inconvenience in my thumb. But not till the following week did I receive the chemist’s report. It overthrew my whole theory. He had found nothing, and returned me the bit of steel.
But I was not convinced.
“I will hunt up this John Graham,” thought I, “and study him.”
But this was not so easy a task as it may appear. As Mrs. Holmes possessed no clue to the whereabouts of her quondam lover, I had nothing to aid me in my search for him, save her rather vague description of his personal appearance and the fact that he was constantly interrupted in speaking by a low, choking cough. However, my natural perseverance carried me through. After seeing and interviewing a dozen John Grahams without result, I at last lit upon a man of that name who presented a figure of such vivid unrest and showed such desperate hatred of his fellows, that I began to entertain hopes of his being the person I was in search of. But determined to be sure of this before proceeding further, I confided my suspicions to Mrs. Holmes, and induced her to accompany me down to a certain spot on the “Elevated” from which I had more than once seen this man go by to his usual lounging place in Printing-house Square.