, whatever his thoughts, he had made up his mind to keep them to
himself. "I'm not going to theorise until I've got something to start
with. The facts seem to point to suicide; but if he swallowed prussic
acid, where's the bottle? He didn't swallow that too, did he?"

"Maybe we'll find it in his clothes," suggested Simmonds.

Thus reminded, Goldberger fell to work looking through the dead man's
pockets. The clothes were of a cheap material and not very new, so
that, in life, he must have presented an appearance somewhat shabby.
There was a purse in the inside coat pocket containing two bills, one
for ten dollars and one for five, and there were two or three dollars
in silver and four five-centime pieces in a small coin purse which he
carried in his trousers' pocket. The larger purse had four or five
calling cards in one of its compartments, each bearing a different
name, none of them his. On the back of one of them, Vantine's address
was written in pencil.

There were no letters, no papers, no written documents of any kind in
the pockets, the remainder of whose contents consisted of such odds
and ends as any man might carry about with him--a cheap watch, a
pen-knife, a half-empty packet of French tobacco, a sheaf of
cigarette paper, four or five keys on a ring, a silk handkerchief,
and perhaps some other articles which I have forgotten--but not a
thing to assist in establishing his identity.

"We'll have to cable over to Paris," remarked Simmonds. "He's French,
all right--that silk handkerchief proves it."

"Yes--and his best girl proves it, too," put in Godfrey.

"His best girl?"

For answer, Godfrey held up the watch, which he had been examining.
He had opened the case, and inside it was a photograph--the
photograph of a woman with bold, dark eyes and full lips and oval
face--a face so typically French that it was not to be mistaken.

"A lady's-maid, I should say," added Godfrey, looking at it again.
"Rather good-looking at one time, but past her first youth, and so
compelled perhaps to bestow her affections on a man a little beneath
her--no doubt compelled also to contribute to his support in order to
retain him. A woman with many pasts and no future--"

"Oh, come," broke in Goldberger impatiently, "keep your second-hand
epigrams for the _Record_. What we want are facts."

Godfrey flushed a little at the words and laid down the watch.

"There is one fact which you have apparently overlooked," he said
qui