Page:Vance--The rass bowl.djvu/341

 Wondering, he stooped and picked it up, and carried it back to the light. It proved to be the girl's hand-bag.

"Now," admitted Maitland in a tone of absolute candor, "I am damned. How the dickens did this thing get there, anyway? What was she doing in my trunk-closet?"

Was it possible that she had followed Anisty out of the flat by that route? A very much mystified young man sat himself down again in front of his desk, and turned the bag over and over in his hands, keenly scrutinizing every inch of it, and whistling softly.

That year the fashion in purses was for capacious receptacles of grained leather, nearly square in shape, and furnished with a chain handle. This which Maitland held was conspicuously of the mode,—neither too large, nor too small, constructed of fine soft leather of a gun-metal shade, with a framework and chain of gun-metal itself. It was new and seemed well-filled, weighing a trifle heavy in the hand. One face was adorned with a monogram of