eek, and--the days are long. It
occurred to me to try to trace that bag."

"In what way?"

"How does any one trace lost articles?" she demanded. "By advertising,
of course. Last Wednesday I advertised for the bag."

I was too astonished to speak.

"I reasoned like this: If there was no such bag, there was no harm done.
As a matter of fact, if there was no such bag, the chances were that we
were all wrong, anyhow. If there was such a bag, I wanted it. Here is
the advertisement as I inserted it."

She gave me a small newspaper cutting

"Lost, a handbag containing private letters, car-tickets, etc. Liberal
reward paid for its return. Please write to A 31, the Daily News."

I sat with it on my palm. It was so simple, so direct. And I, a lawyer,
and presumably reasonably acute, had not thought of it!

"You are wasted on us, Mrs. Dane," I acknowledged. "Well? I see
something has come of it."

"Yes, but I'm not ready for it."

She dived again into the bag, and brought up another clipping.

"On the day that I had that inserted," she said impressively, "this also
appeared. They were in the same column." She read the second clipping
aloud, slowly, that I might gain all its significance:

"Lost on the night of Monday, November the second, between State Avenue
and Park Avenue, possibly on an Eastern Line street car, a black handbag
containing keys, car-tickets, private letters, and a small sum of money.
Reward and no questions asked if returned to Daily News office."

She passed the clipping to me and I compared the two. It looked strange,
and I confess to a tingling feeling that coincidence, that element so
much to be feared in any investigation, was not the solution here. But
there was such a chance, and I spoke of it.

"Coincidence rubbish!" she retorted. "I am not through, my friend."

She went down into the bag again, and I expected nothing less than the
pocketbook, letters and all, to appear. But she dragged up, among a
miscellany of handkerchiefs, a bottle of smelling-salts, and a few
almonds, of which she was inordinately fond, an envelope.

"Yesterday," she said, "I took a taxicab ride. You know my chair gets
tiresome, occasionally. I stopped at the newspaper office, and found the
bag had not been turned in, but that there was a letter for A 31." She
held out the envelope to me.

"Read it," she observed. "It is a curious human document. You'll
probably be no wiser for reading it, but it shows one thing: