Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/31

 dous item. He smiled gratefully—it was a trick of the Fates, he decided. Had it not been for that promise of the government to pay anybody who held it ten thousand dollars, he would hardly have been able to dig up a sufficient reason for calling on the girl, always supposing he was fortunate enough to be able to locate her.

Here was his reason and his excuse, thrust right into his hands by the gods themselves. Could anything be more simple? Could anything have happened more fortuitously?

“It could not,” he decided. “And now to see if there are any more.”

A careful search, however, failed to reveal anything else. For a long time he lay there, reviewing the events of the day, and making a plan of campaign. It ought not to be hard to round up all the Pomeroys in New York.

And then there was always old Mat Masterson, the bookseller. He had a bundle of books from the same source—perhaps they held some indication of the erstwhile owner. He would go there the first thing in the morning and look them over. That settled, he extinguished his lamp and sleepily settled himself for slumber. A shaft of yellow moonlight struck through the darkness into his room, touching everything in its strait-ruled path with a wan and sickly gold, deepening the shadows in the corners and under the furniture. He closed his eyes and slept.

His sleep was troubled by dreams, peopled with the ghosts conjured up out of the cobwebs of his imagination. A bloodcurdling, ghostly dance was done around his bed by Eddie Hughes, but not the Eddie Hughes of New York—it was Eddie Hughes as he had