"I wanted to ask you, Mr. Sherrill," Alan said, "about those facts in regard to Mr. Corvet which you mentioned to me yesterday but did not explain. You said it would not aid me to know them; but I found certain things in Mr. Corvet's house last night which made me want to know, if I could, everything you could tell me."
Sherrill opened a drawer and took out a large, plain envelope.
"I did not tell you about these yesterday, Alan," he said, "not only because I had not decided how to act in regard to these matters, but because I had not said anything to Mr. Spearman about them previously, because I expected to get some additional information from you. After seeing you, I was obliged to wait for Spearman to get back to town. The circumstances are such that I felt myself obliged to talk them over first with him; I have done that this morning; so I was going to send for you, if you had not come down."
Sherrill thought a minute, still holding the envelope closed in his hand.
"On the day after your father disappeared," he went on, "but before I knew he was gone—or before any one except my daughter felt any alarm about him—I received a short note from him. I will show it to you later, if you wish; its exact wording, however, is unimportant. It had been mailed very late the night before and apparently at the mail box near his house or at least, by the postmark, somewhere in the neighborhood; and for that reason had not been taken up before the morning collection and did not reach the office until I had been here and gone away again about eleven o'clock. I did not get it, therefore, until after
