Page:Mary Rinehart - Man in Lower Ten.djvu/209

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

CHAPTER XVIII


A NEW WORLD


HOTCHKISS jotted down the bits of telegram and rose.

"Well," he said, "we've done something. We've found where the murderer left the train, we know what day he went to Baltimore, and, most important of all, we have a motive for the crime."

"It seems the irony of fate," said McKnight, getting up, "that a man should kill another man for certain papers he is supposed to be carrying, find he hasn't got them after all, decide to throw suspicion on another man by changing berths and getting out, bag and baggage, and then, by the merest fluke of chance, take with him, in the valise he changed for his own, the very notes he was after. It was a bit of luck for him."

"Then why," put in Hotchkiss doubtfully,

191