“Shure it was a rotten trick, but why d’ye come here?”

“I want you to go through your baggage-room with me till we find a trunk which this key will fit.”

“Come on with ye.  I’m blamed if I don’t admire yer nerve.  Of course ye understand I’ve no right to let ye in—­that’s up to the station-master, but he’s a grouchy divil.”  The speaker led Paul into a room piled high with trunks, then summoned two helpers.  “We’ll move every dam’ wan of them till we fit your little key,” he declared; then the four men fell to.

A blind search promised to be a job of hours, so Paul walked down the runway between the piles of trunks, using his eyes as he went.  At least he could eliminate certain classes of baggage, and thus he might shorten the search; but half-way down the row he called sharply to the smashers: 

“Come here, quick!” At his tone they came running.  “Look! that one in the bottom row!” he cried.  “That’s it.  Something tells me it is.”

On the floor underneath the pile was a little, flat, battered tin trunk, pathetically old-fashioned and out of place among its more stylish neighbors; it was the kind of trunk Paul had seen in his mother’s front room on the farm.  It was bound about with a bit of rope.

His excitement infected the others, and the three smashers went at the pile, regardless of damage.  Anderson’s suspense bid fair to choke him; what if this were not the one? he asked himself.  But what if it were the right one?  What if this key he clutched in his cold palm should fit the lock?  Paul pictured what he would see when he lifted the lid:  a collection of forms, hangers, patterns, yard-sticks, a tape measure, and somewhere in it a little black yarn mitten.  He prayed blindly for courage to withstand disappointment.

“There she is,” panted his Irish friend, dragging the object out into the clear.  The other men crowded closer.  “Come on, lad.  What are ye waitin’ for?”

Anderson knelt before the little battered trunk and inserted the key.  It was the keenest moment he had ever lived.  He turned the key; then he was on his feet, cold, calm, his blue eyes glittering.

“Cut those ropes.  Quick!” he ordered.  “We’re right.”

The man at his side whipped out a knife and slashed twice.

“Come close, all of you,” Paul directed, “and remember everything we find.  You may have to testify.”

He lifted the lid.  On the top of the shallow tray lay a little black yarn mitten, the mate to that one in the city Morgue.

Anderson smiled into the faces of the men at his side.  “That’s it,” he said, simply.

The tall Irishman laid a hand on his shoulder, saying:  “Yer all right, boy.  Don’t get rattled,”

Paul opened the till and found precisely the paraphernalia he had expected:  there were forms, hangers, patterns, yard-sticks, and a tape measure.  In the compartment beneath were some neatly folded clothes, the needlework of which was fine, and in one corner a bundle of letters which Anderson examined with trembling fingers.  They were addressed to “Miss Mabel Wilkes, Highland, Ontario, Canada, Care of Captain Wilkes.”