fullerton, like a number of other lawyers in waynscott, had had his office in the equity building, and lyon made it convenient, in the course of his morning's tramp for news the next day, to visit the equity. as he expected, he found fullerton's office locked, but he hunted up the manager of the building, and persuaded him to unlock it for him. perhaps the fact that he was a personal friend made a difference in his willingness, though he pretended to protest at what he called the morbid sensationalism of the press.
"what do you expect to get out of his empty rooms?" he asked.
"i'm working up a story," said lyon carelessly. "i want to see what i can get in the way of personal idiosyncrasies."
the suite consisted of three rooms,--a large reception room, one side of which was covered with book-cases; a private office at the back; and, adjoining this, a room for the use of a stenographer, as was evident from the typewriter beside the window. there was so little furniture in this room that lyon saw it could be dismissed in the special inquiry which he had in mind. in the private office a large flat desk occupied the center of the room.
"is this room the way fullerton left it?" lyon asked, taking the chair which was placed before the desk, and glancing about.
"yes. no one has been here since he left."
"no stenographer or clerk?"
"he has had no clerk for some time, and when he needed a stenographer he called one in from the agency in the building. as a matter of fact, i think his business had fallen off rather seriously in the last few years. he had lost some of his old clients, and he didn't seem to get new ones. often his office would be locked up and he would be away for days at a time."
"bad for business, that. was his office rent paid?"
the manager shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "no. but i have a lien on his library, so i guess i'm safe."
"indeed! then he must really have been pretty badly tied up financially?"
"he was pretty obviously going to pieces. you see, his personal tastes were expensive, and they incapacitated him for business. that cut both ways, in the matter of income."
"how about his other creditors, if you have a lien on his library? that seems to be the only valuable property here."
the manager laughed again. "if there was one man here the day after he was killed there were nineteen. they were all ready to attach his books. there was some rather deep swearing. funny what things come out about a man after he is dead."
"it's more than funny," said lyon, with an air of saying something worth listening to. he was automatically pulling out one drawer of the desk after another, sometimes merely glancing in, sometimes lightly turning over the contents with a careless hand. "we don't know much of the personal lives of the people about us. things are not always what they seem." he probably could have kept up the platitudinizing longer if necessary, but he had opened all the drawers. none were locked. there was no scrap of the curious greenish gray paper anywhere, nor, indeed, anything but files of documents obviously legal, and mostly dust-covered. "but his personal belongings were rather gorgeous." he opened curiously a bronze stamp box which matched the other appointments of the desk, and examined the contents. there was a lot of red stamps, but no green. that was about all that he had hoped to discover. it had seemed probable from the first that fullerton would have his peculiar personal belongings at his own room rather than at his office, but lyon had wished to eliminate the other possibility.
as he came out of the room, a strange and yet familiar figure passed down the hall toward the elevator just ahead of him,--the heavy figure and white head of mr. olden. lyon glanced back. lawrence's office was farther down the hall, and lawrence's law cleric, a young fellow named freeman, whom lyon knew slightly, stood in the open door looking after his departing visitor with a curious watchfulness. on the impulse, lyon turned back.
"what scrape has my most respectable landlord been getting into, that he needs legal advice?" he asked.
"come in," said freeman, with evident pleasure. "i'm mighty glad to have you give the old gentleman a character. i began to wonder if there wasn't something suspicious about him."
"why?"
"he came in a few days ago and asked for lawrence. i explained why he couldn't see him. he fumed around a little, and finally said he wanted a will drawn up, and couldn't i do it? i thought i could all right, so i got him to give me the items. it involved a lot of little bequests,--he seems to be a retired merchant from somewhere down the state with an interminable family connection,--and i took a lot of notes and told him i would have the will drawn up in a few days. he has been in every day since to make changes and alterations, till i am all balled up. either i got things badly mixed in my notes or he has forgotten just how his sisters and his cousins and his aunts are arranged. i'll swear he has mixed the babies."
"well, if he pays you for your trouble," laughed lyon.
"yes, he made it clear that he wanted me to charge up my wasted time, but--he's queer all the same. i almost thought to-day that the whole business of the will was a blind, and that he was here for some purpose of his own."
"that sounds more serious. what made you think that?"
"i had gone into the inner room to hunt up my original notes, because he insisted that i had made a mistake, when i heard the roll top of lawrence's desk pushed up. lawrence never locks it, but the old man hadn't any business in there, all the same. i came out in a hurry, and there he was, hunting around in the desk. he wasn't a bit fazed by my coming back, either. said he wanted some paper to write a letter and fretted and fumed over the pen and ink as though the whole outfit belonged to him. i cleared a place for him, and left him writing, while i shifted my own chair so that i could keep an eye on him. he wrote two or three short letters, and tossed something into the waste basket there. then, when he was through, he picked up the waste basket and began hunting through it. i supposed he wanted to recover what he had thrown in, until i saw him pick out a square envelope and put it with his own papers."
"and you think it was not his own?"
"i know it wasn't, because i knew the paper he was using. as it happens, that basket hasn't been emptied since lawrence was here. the envelope must have been something he had tossed into the basket,--but i couldn't very well demand the return of an old envelope picked up from a waste basket. still, i couldn't help wondering whether the man was a sneak thief or a private detective or just a little touched in the upper story."
"has he been inquisitive about lawrence's affairs?" lyon asked.
"the first time he was here he asked a good many questions about him, but i thought that was natural curiosity under all the circumstances. one of his innumerable cousins had married a lawrence and he wanted to find out if there was any connection between the families. and he really seemed to know something about him, because he insisted that arthur lawrence had married a mrs. vanderburg."
"but he didn't!"
"no, of course not. but he was a great friend of mrs. vanderburg's, and no one would have been surprised if he had married her. there were many who expected that to be the outcome. and when she became engaged to broughton, whom she afterwards did marry, lawrence took it hard. there was a serious quarrel, and lawrence wouldn't attend the wedding. i remember hearing my mother say that if lawrence had had broughton's money, broughton would never have had any show."
"but she wasn't divorced at that time, was she?"
"no, but she could have had a divorce whenever she wanted it. vanderburg had been missing for ten or twelve years."
this was surprising information for lyon, and not a little disturbing. was there, after all, a possibility that even if he established the identity of the fleeing woman as mrs. broughton, lawrence might still be entangled? lyon felt as though he were trying to pick his way among live wires.
"did you tell olden this story?" he asked, remembering the curious interest which that inquisitive person had always seemed to take in lawrence's affairs.
"well, he got it out of me, i guess. he knew so much that he could easily pump the balance."
"what did he say?"
"nothing much. he kept nodding his head, as though he knew it all beforehand. what do you make of it, anyhow?"
"the curiosity of an idle mind," said lyon, lightly. "there are plenty of people who have an abnormal curiosity about anybody who is accused of crime. but i wouldn't give him too much rope."
the episode gave him something new to puzzle about. olden's curiosity about lawrence had been marked from the beginning, and it had not been wholly a friendly curiosity. that much had been apparent. lyon was accustomed to the curious interest which monotonously virtuous people take in criminals, and he had set down his landlord's desire to talk about the murder mystery to that score. he had shown no curiosity about fullerton or interest in him. and though he was curious about lawrence, he seemed very inadequately informed concerning him.
lyon turned the thing in his mind without being able to make it fit in with anything else. at the same time he determined to find out something more about mr. olden at the earliest opportunity. for the immediate present, however, the thing to do was to get into fullerton's rooms at the wellington again, and see what discoveries he could make there.
