Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/266

240 it was the same. There was no need to apply any finer tests.

“I remember him now,” said Jones, looking from one photograph to the other, “very well. He was a quiet, well-behaved chap-had been captain of a little tramp steamer, I believe. He had a perfect mania for cutting pieces out of newspapers and pasting them in a scrap-book. He spent all his leisure time that way. Oh, yes; I remember, too, he tried to escape, but his pal went back on him and left him layin’ out yonder by the wall. His pal was a bad one, he was; he got away and I’ve often wondered what become of him. Here he is.”

He swung open another compartment, and I found myself staring at Tremaine!

Not until I was quite near New York did I recover sufficiently from the effects of this discovery to heed the cry of the train-boy as he went through the coaches with the evening papers.

“All about th’ Edgemere murder!” he was crying, and the name caught my ear.

“Edgemere,” I repeated to myself. “Edgemere. I’ve heard that name somewhere.”

Then in a flash I remembered; and in a moment more the whole story of the tragedy of the night before—the murder of Graham and the theft of Mrs. Delroy’s necklace—lay before me. With what intensity of interest I read it can be easily imagined; I was shaken, nervous, horror-stricken. That there was some connection between this second tragedy and the one in suite fourteen I did not doubt; and I read and