Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/61



T was long past midnight when Godfrey dropped from the top of the Record building in the express elevator and walked over to the station of the Elevated for the trip uptown. The story was written-it would be the feature of the morning’s paper, and it would be illustrated “exclusively”—but he was not wholly satisfied with it. He had accepted the explanation given by Miss Croydon, yet he felt instinctively that it did not explain—that there was much below the surface of which he had caught only the faintest glimpse and which he was utterly unable to decipher. He did not at all believe—and he took care that the readers of the Record should have no cause to believe—that Miss Croydon was in any way directly connected with the crime. Indeed, there was every evidence that she had, in that particular, spoken the truth.

And in the other particulars? Well, it was hard to separate the wheat from the chaff; hard to tell where truth left off and invention began. Some foundation of truth the story must have had, or it would not have been told so glibly nor appear so plausible. Indeed, in two details, it had been confirmed by other evidence—they had found the pipe with which the blow was struck and the bullet from her pistol embedded in the door.

Below it all, underlying it all, the foundation upon