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Like a flash came the recollection of that key stuck to the bottom of the girl’s leather purse at the coroner’s office. Ten minutes later Paul was back at the City Hall.

For a second time he was greeted with laughter by the reportorial squad; again he paid no heed.

“Why, you saw those things not two hours ago,” protested the coroner’s clerk, in answer to his inquiry.

“I want to see them again.”

“Well, I’m busy. You’ve had them once, that’s enough.”

“Friend,” said Anderson, quietly, “I want those things and I want them quick. You give them to me or I’ll go to the man higher up and get them–and your job along with them.”

The fellow obeyed reluctantly. Paul picked the key loose and examined it closely. While he was thus engaged, one of the reporters behind him said:

“Aha! At last he has the key to the mystery.”

The general laughter ceased abruptly when the object of this banter thrust the key into his pocket and advanced threateningly toward the speaker, his face white with rage. The latter rose to his feet; he undertook to execute a dignified retreat, but Anderson seized him viciously, flung him back, and pinned him against the wall, crying, furiously:

“You dirty rat! If you open your face to me again, I’ll brain you, and that goes for all of this death-watch.” He took in the other five men with his reddened eyes. “When you fellows see me coming, hole up. Understand?”

His grip was so fierce, his mouth had such a wicked twist to it, that his victim understood him perfectly and began to grin in a sickly, apologetic fashion. Paul reseated the reporter at his desk with such violence that a chair leg gave way; then he strode out of the building.

For the next few hours Anderson tramped the streets in impotent anger, striving to master himself, for that trifling episode had so upset him that he could not concentrate his mind upon the subject in hand. When he tried to do so his conclusions seemed grotesquely fanciful and farfetched. This delay was all the more annoying because on the morrow the girl was to be buried, and, therefore, the precious hours were slipping away. He tried repeatedly to attain that abstract, subconscious mood in which alone shines the pure light of inductive reasoning.

“Where is that trunk? Where is that trunk? Where is that trunk?” he repeated, tirelessly. Could it be in some other rooming-house? No. If the girl had disappeared from such a place, leaving her trunk behind, the publicity would have uncovered the fact. It might be lying in the baggage-room of some hotel, to be sure; but Paul doubted that, for the same reason. The girl had been poor, too; it was unlikely that she would have gone to a high-priced hotel. Well, he couldn’t examine all the baggage in all the cheap hotels of the city–that was evident. Somehow he could not picture that girl in a cheap hotel; she was too fine, too patrician. No, it was more likely that she had left her trunk in some railroad station. This was a long chance, but Paul took it.

The girl had come from Canada, therefore Anderson went to the Grand Trunk Railway depot and asked for the baggage-master. There were other roads, but this seemed the most likely.

A raw-boned Irish baggage-man emerged from the confusion, and of a sudden Paul realized the necessity of even greater tact here than he had used with the Scotch girl, for he had no authority of any sort behind him by virtue of which he could demand so much as a favor.

“Are you a married man?” he inquired, abruptly.

“G’wan! I thought ye wanted a baggage-man,” the big fellow replied.

“Don’t kid me; this is important.”

“Shure, I am, but I don’t want any accident insurance. I took a chance and I’m game.”

“Have you any daughters?”

“Two of them. But what’s it to ye?”