uplicity and crime it was destined to
lead him. For to the wearing of this old duster on this especial
morning, innocent as the occasion was, I attribute John Randolph's
temptation to murder. Had he gone out without it, he would have taken
his usual course up Broadway and never met _me_; or even if he had taken
the same roundabout way to his apartments as that which led to our
encounter, he would never have dared, in his ordinary fine dress,
conspicuous as it made him, to have entered upon those measures, which,
as he is clever enough to know, lead to disgrace, if they do not end in
a felon's cell. It was John Randolph, then, or Randolph Stone, as he is
pleased to call himself in New York, and not Franklin Van Burnam (who
had doubtless proceeded in another direction) who came up to where
Howard had stood, saw the keys he had dropped, and put them in his own
pocket. It was as innocent an action as the donning of the duster, and
yet it was fraught with the worst consequences to himself and others.

"Being of the same height and complexion as Franklin Van Burnam, and
both gentlemen wearing at that time a moustache (my husband shaved his
off after the murder), the mistakes which arose out of this strange
equipment were but natural. Seen from the rear or in the semi-darkness
of a hotel-office they might look alike, though to me or to any one
studying them well, their faces are really very different.

"But to return. Leading me through streets of which I knew nothing, he
presently stopped before the entrance of a large hotel.

"'I tell you what, Olive,' said he, 'we had better go in here, take a
room, and send for such things as you require to make you look like a
lady.'

"As I had no objection to anything which kept me at his side, I told him
that whatever suited him suited me, and followed him quite eagerly into
the office. I did not know then that this hotel was a second-rate one,
not having had experience with the best, but if I had, I should not have
wondered at his choice, for there was nothing in his appearance, as I
have already intimated, or in his manners up to this point, to lead me
to think he was one of the city's great swells, and that it was only in
such an unfashionable house as this he would be likely to pass
unrecognized. How with his markedly handsome features and distinguished
bearing he managed so to carry himself as to look like a man of inferior
breeding, I can no more explain than I can the singular