“The slightest particulars are of interest to us just now,” the reporter reminded him.

Mr. Coulson nodded.

“Hamilton Fynes,” he said, “so far as I knew him, was a quiet, inoffensive sort of creature, who has been drawing a regular salary from the State for the last fifteen years and saving half of it.  He has been coming over to Europe now and then, and though he was a good, steady chap enough, he liked his fling when he was over here, and between you and me, he was the greatest crank I ever struck.  I met him in London a matter of three years ago, and he wanted to go to Paris.  There were two cars running at the regular time, meeting the boat at Dover.  Do you think he would have anything to do with them?  Not he!  He hired a special train and went down like a prince.”

“What did he do that for?” the reporter asked.

“Why, because he was a crank, sir,” Mr. Coulson answered confidentially.  “There was no other reason at all.  Take this last voyage on the Lusitania, now.  He spoke to me the first day out because he couldn’t help it, but for pretty well the rest of the journey he either kept down in his stateroom or, when he came up on deck, he avoided me and everybody else.  When he did talk, his talk was foolish.  He was a good chap at his work, I believe, but he was a crank.  Seemed to me sometimes as though that humdrum life of his had about turned his brain.  The last day out he was fidgeting all the time; kept looking at his watch, studying the chart, and asking the sailors questions.  Said he wanted to get up in time to take a girl to lunch on Thursday.  It was just for that reason that he scuttled off the boat without a word to any of us, and rushed up to London.”

“But he had letters, Mr. Coulson,” the reporter reminded him, “from some one in Washington, to the captain of the steamer and to the station-master of the London and North Western Railway.  It seems rather odd that he should have provided himself with these, doesn’t it?”

“They were easy enough to get,” Mr. Coulson answered.  “He wasn’t a worrying sort of chap, Fynes wasn’t.  He did his work, year in and year out, and asked no favors.  The consequence was that when he asked a queer one he got it all right.  It’s easier to get a pull over there than it is here, you know.”

“This is all very interesting,” the reporter said, “and I am sure I’m very much obliged to you, Mr. Coulson.  Now can you tell me of anything in the man’s life or way of living likely to provoke enmity on the part of any one?  This murder was such a cold-blooded affair.”

“There I’m stuck,” Mr. Coulson admitted.  “There’s only one thing I can tell you, and that is that I believe he had a lot more money on him than the amount mentioned in your newspapers this morning.  My own opinion is that he was murdered for what he’d got.  A smart thief would say that a fellow who takes a special tug off the steamer and a special train to town was a man worth robbing.  How the thing was done I don’t know—­that’s for your police to find out—­but I reckon that whoever killed him did it for his cash.”