word.

“That was natural. But you made a mistake. I’ll tell you frankly that I was a police detective once, but I’ve left the force. I’m a private citizen, now, same as you are. Got a little business of my own—what you might call a private investigator. Collecting information—jobs like that. Nothing to do with criminal cases.”

He was silent for a moment.

“Nothing to do with criminal cases,” he repeated. “I don’t like ’em. Now, this—”

Again he fell silent.

“We’ll hope this isn’t one,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it. My sister, she’s a widow, and she keeps a rooming house, down on West Twelfth Street. Well, yesterday she came to me with a story that sort of interested me. She told me that about a month ago a young fellow took a room in her house. Quiet young fellow, didn’t give any trouble, but she’d taken a good deal of notice of him, in what you might call a sort of motherly way.”

“Yes, I know,” Ross nodded.

“A good-looking young fellow, very polite and nice in his ways—and she thought from the start that he was pretty badly worried about something. She’d hear him walking up and down at night—and she said there was a look on his face—You know how women are.”

“Yes,” Ross agreed.

“So, when he didn’t show up for a couple of nights, she came to me. I told her to go to the police, but she had some sort of notion that he wouldn’t like that—and I dare say she didn’t like it herself. Bad for business—a thing like that in the newspapers, you know. So, just to please her, I got his door unlocked, and had a look at his room.”

“You found—”

“Well, the first thing I saw there was a pile of money on the table—about seventy-five dollars in bills, under a paper weight, and a half finished letter. No name—just began right off—‘I won’t wait any longer.’ But here’s the letter. You can see for yourself.”

Unbuttoning his overcoat, he took a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and handed it to Ross. It read:

CONTENTS

I won’t wait any longer. I am coming out to Stamford tomorrow, and if you refuse to see me this time, it will be the end. You’ve been putting me off with one lie after the other for 

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