As a matter of fact, I agreed with Mr. Porter, for nothing I had discovered among the late Mr. Crawford’s effects led me to think he had any secret romance.

After Mr. Porter’s departure I studied long over my puzzles, and I came to the conclusion that I could do little more until I should hear from headquarters.

XV

THE PHOTOGRAPH EXPLAINED

That evening I went to see Philip Crawford.  As one of the executors of his late brother’s estate, and as probable heir to the same, he was an important personage just now.

He seemed glad to see me, and glad to discuss ways and means of running down the assassin.  Like Mr. Porter, he attached little importance to the gold bag.

“I can’t help thinking it belongs to Florence,” he said.  “I know the girl so well, and I know that her horrified fear of being in any way connected with the tragedy might easily lead her to, disown her own property, thinking the occasion justified the untruth.  That girl has no more guilty knowledge of Joseph’s death than I have, and that is absolutely none.  I tell you frankly, Mr. Burroughs, I haven’t even a glimmer of a suspicion of any one.  I can’t think of an enemy my brother had; he was the most easy-going of men.  I never knew him to quarrel with anybody.  So I trust that you, with your detective talent, can at least find a clue to lead us in the right direction.”

“You don’t admit the gold bag as a clue, then?” I asked.

“Nonsense!  No!  If that were a clue, it would point to some woman who came secretly at night to visit Joseph.  My brother was not that sort of man, sir.  He had no feminine acquaintances that were unknown to his relatives.”

“That is, you suppose so.”

“I know it!  We have been brothers for sixty years or more, and whatever Joseph’s faults, they did not lie in that direction.  No, sir; if that bag is not Florence’s, then there is some other rational and commonplace explanation of its presence there.”

“I’m glad to hear you speak so positively, Mr. Crawford, as to your brother’s feminine acquaintances.  And in connection with the subject, I would like to show you this photograph which I found in his desk.”

I handed the card to Mr. Crawford, whose features broke into a smile as he looked at it.

“Oh, that,” he said; “that is a picture, of Mrs. Patton.”  He looked at the picture with a glance that seemed to be of admiring reminiscence, and he studied the gentle face of the photograph a moment without speaking.

Then he said, “She was beautiful as a girl.  She used to be a school friend of both Joseph and myself.”

“She wrote rather an affectionate message on the back,” I observed.

Mr. Crawford turned the picture over.

“Oh, she didn’t send this picture to Joseph.  She sent it to my wife last Christmas.  I took it over to show it to Joseph some months ago, and left it there without thinking much about it.  He probably laid it in his desk without thinking much about it, either.  No, no, Burroughs, there is no romance there, and you can’t connect Mrs. Patton with any of your detective investigations.”