“At what hour did you buy it?”

“I don’t know exactly.  It was some time after midnight.”

Really, there was little use in questioning this man.  If he had bought his paper at half-past eleven, as I felt positive he did, and if he had come out to Sedgwick on the twelve o’clock train, he was quite capable of answering me in this casual way, to throw me off the track.

Well, I would try once again.

“Excuse me, Mr. Hall, but I am obliged to ask you some personal questions now.  Are you engaged to Miss Lloyd?”

“I beg your pardon?”

His continued requests for me to repeat my questions irritated me beyond endurance.  Of course it was a bluff to gain time, but he did it so politely, I couldn’t rebuke him.

“Are you engaged to Miss Lloyd?” I repeated.

“No, I think not,” he said slowly.  “She wants to break it off, and I, as a poor man, should not stand in the way of her making a brilliant marriage.  She has many opportunities for such, as her uncle often told me, and I should be selfish indeed, now that she herself is poor, to hold her to her promise to me.”

The hypocrite!  To lay on Florence the responsibility for breaking the engagement.  Truly, she was well rid of him, and I hoped I could convince her of the fact.

“But she is not so poor,” I said.  “Mr. Philip Crawford told me he intends to provide for her amply.  And I’m sure that means a fair-sized fortune, for the Crawfords are generous people.”

Gregory Hall’s manner changed.

“Did Philip Crawford say that?” he cried.  “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure, as he said it to me.”

“Then Florence and I may be happy yet,” he said; and as I looked him straight in the eye, he had the grace to look ashamed of himself, and, with a rising color, he continued:  “I hope you understand me, Mr. Burroughs.  No man could ask a girl to marry him if he knew that meant condemning her to comparative poverty.”

“No, of course not,” said I sarcastically.  “Then I assume that, so far as you are concerned, your engagement with Miss Lloyd is not broken?”

“By no means.  In fact, I could not desert her just now, when there is a—­well, a sort of a cloud over her.”

“What do you mean?” I thundered.  “There is no cloud over her.”

“Well, you know, the gold bag and the yellow rose leaves . . . "

“Be silent!  The gold bag has been claimed by its owner.  But you are responsible for its presence in this room!  You, who brought it from the midnight train, and left it here!  You, who also left the late city newspaper here!  You, who also dropped two yellow petals from the rose in your buttonhole.”

Gregory Hall seemed to turn to stone as he listened to my words.  He became white, then ashen gray.  His hands clinched his chair-arms, and his eyes grew glassy and fixed.

I pushed home my advantage.  “And therefore, traced by these undeniable evidences, I know that you are the slayer of Joseph Crawford.  You killed your friend, your benefactor, your employer, in order that he might not disinherit the girl whose fortune you wish to acquire by marrying her!”