Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/247

Rh driven by the janitor, Tremaine would have had possession of them long ago, and perhaps we should never have penetrated the mystery of Thompson’s death. Now, it would be laid bare before us—the whole secret! What a little thing it was that had saved us!

I had the carpet loose—I turned it back, and there they lay, that little roll of clippings, just as they had been taken from Thompson’s pocket-book. They were to tell us the whole story—we could not again be led astray. I was quite calm again. I picked them up carefully and laid them on my desk. Then I washed my hands and filled my pipe. There was a certain exquisite pleasure in holding myself back from them, in tantalising myself, in deferring for a moment or two the revelation which was to come.

But at last I sat down and spread them out on the desk before me. There were twelve of them, some only a few lines in length, others of half a column. Of one there were four copies, but of the others only one apiece. They were tattered and stained from long carrying; some were in English and some were in French, and they were dated from places as far apart as Dieppe, New York, Sydney.

I piled them carefully beside me and started hopefully on the task of deciphering them—of piecing together the story they had to tell me. But the farther I proceeded, the more my spirits fell: for they told no story, they seemed to have no relation to each other—no common thread. Apparently, they had been gathered aimlessly at haphazard to satisfy the whim of the moment. One chronicled a wreck at sea;