Well, I was the fly.  I had seen too much of circumstantial evidence to have any belief that the establishing of my identity would weigh much against the other incriminating details.  It meant imprisonment and trial, probably, with all the notoriety and loss of practice they would entail.  A man thinks quickly at a time like that.  All the probable consequences of the finding of that pocket-book flashed through my mind as I extended my hand to take it.  Then I drew my arm back.

“I don’t want it,” I said.  “Look inside.  Maybe the other man took the money and left the wallet.”

The conductor opened it, and again there was a curious surging forward of the crowd.  To my intense disappointment the money was still there.

I stood blankly miserable while it was counted out—­five one-hundred-dollar bills, six twenties, and some fives and ones that brought the total to six hundred and fifty dollars.

The little man with the note-book insisted on taking the numbers of the notes, to the conductor’s annoyance.  It was immaterial to me:  small things had lost their power to irritate.  I was seeing myself in the prisoner’s box, going through all the nerve-racking routine of a trial for murder—­the challenging of the jury, the endless cross-examinations, the alternate hope and fear.  I believe I said before that I had no nerves, but for a few minutes that morning I was as near as a man ever comes to hysteria.

I folded my arms and gave myself a mental shake.  I seemed to be the center of a hundred eyes, expressing every shade of doubt and distrust, but I tried not to flinch.  Then some one created a diversion.

The amateur detective was busy again with the seal-skin bag, investigating the make of the safety razor and the manufacturer’s name on the bronze-green tie.  Now, however, he paused and frowned, as though some pet theory had been upset.

Then from a corner of the bag he drew out and held up for our inspection some three inches of fine gold chain, one end of which was blackened and stained with blood!

The conductor held out his hand for it, but the little man was not ready to give it up.  He turned to me.

“You say no watch was left you?  Was there a piece of chain like that?”

“No chain at all,” I said sulkily.  “No jewelry of any kind, except plain gold buttons in the shirt I am wearing.”

“Where are your glasses?” he threw at me suddenly:  instinctively my hand went to my eyes.  My glasses had been gone all morning, and I had not even noticed their absence.  The little man smiled cynically and held out the chain.

“I must ask you to examine this,” he insisted.  “Isn’t it a part of the fine gold chain you wear over your ear?”

I didn’t want to touch the thing:  the stain at the end made me shudder.  But with a baker’s dozen of suspicious eyes—­well, we’ll say fourteen:  there were no one-eyed men—­I took the fragment in the tips of my fingers and looked at it helplessly.