Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/88

68 “Some of ifs marked with one initial, some with another. Not one piece is marked with his.”

“That is queer,” commented Godfrey; “but it isn’t half so queer as another thing. Why should a sailor, a drunkard, without a decent suit of clothes, rent an apartment that costs him forty dollars a month, when he could get a room for a dollar a week down on the Bowery, his natural stamping ground?”

Simmonds nodded helplessly.

“That’s so,” he said.

“Unless,” added Godfrey, “he thought he had to have some such place to work from. He could hardly have asked Miss Croydon to meet him in a Bowery lodging house.”

“No,” agreed Simmonds; “but he needn’t have blown in forty dollars, either. He could ’a’ got a nice room ‘most anywhere uptown for five a week”

A tap at the door interrupted him.

“Come in,” he called.

The door opened and the coroner’s clerk entered.

“Mr. Goldberg sent the exhibits back to you,” he said, holding out a parcel to Simmonds.

Simmonds opened it and took out a pocket-book, a pipe, a knife, and some silver money.

“All right,” he said, and signed a receipt.

Godfrey waited until the door closed, then he rose and came over to Simmonds’s side.

“There’s something here that might help us,” he said, picking up the pocket-book. “Those clippings—why, they’re not here!”

Simmonds smiled drily.