s. The sick man was
resting quietly, and he did not stir when she crossed to the bed and
laid a cool palm on his forehead.

"You poor castaway!" she murmured. "I wonder who you are, and to whom
you belong? I suppose somebody has got to be mean and sneaky and find
out. Would you rather it would be I than some one else who might care
even less than I do?"

The sleeping man opened unseeing eyes and closed them again heavily. "I
found the money, _Carlotta mia_; you didn't know that, did you?" he
muttered; and then the narcotic seized and held him again.

His clothes were on a chair, and when she had carried them to a light
that could be shaded completely from the bed and its occupant, she
searched the pockets one by one. It was a little surprising to find all
but two of them quite empty; no cards, no letters, no pen, pencil,
pocket-knife, or purse; nothing but a handkerchief, and in one pocket of
the waistcoat a small roll of paper money, a few coins and two small
keys.

She held the coat up to the electric and examined it closely; the
workmanship, the trimmings. It was not tailor-made, she decided, and by
all the little signs and tokens it was quite new. And the same was true
of the other garments. But there was no tag or trade-mark on any of them
to show where they came from.

Failing to find the necessary clew to the castaway's identity in this
preliminary search, she went on resolutely, dragging the two suit-cases
over to the lighted corner and unlocking them with the keys taken from
the pocket of the waistcoat.

The first yielded nothing but clothing, all new and evidently unworn.
The second held more clothing, a man's toilet appliances, also new and
unused, but apparently no scrap of writing or hint of a name. With a
little sigh of bafflement she took the last tightly rolled bundle of
clothing from the suit-case. While she was lifting it a pistol fell out.

In times past, Jasper Grierson's daughter had known weapons and their
faults and excellences. "That places him--a little," she mused, putting
the pistol aside after she had glanced at it: "He's from the East; he
doesn't know a gun from a piece of common hardware."

Further search in the tightly rolled bundle was rewarded by the
discovery of a typewritten book manuscript, unsigned, and with it an
oblong packet wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. She slipped
the string and removed the wrapping. The brick-shaped packet proved to
be a thick block of b