bit; "I don't
think Mr. Hall came out from New York that night. I'm 'most sure he
didn't, because he usually gives me his newspaper as he steps off the
train, and I didn't get any `extra' that night."

Of course this wasn't positive proof that Hall wasn't there, so I asked
him to tell me all the West Sedgwick people that he did remember as
being on his train that night.

He mentioned a dozen or more, but they were nearly all names unknown to
me.

"Do you remember the Cunninghams being on the train?" I asked.

"Those Marathon Park people? Oh, yes. They were a gay party,--coming
back from a theatre supper, I suppose. And that reminds me: Philip
Crawford sat right behind the Cunninghams. I forgot him before. Well, I
guess that's all the West Sedgwick people I can remember."

I went away not much the wiser, but with a growing thought that buzzed
in my brain.

It was absurd, of course. But he had said Philip Crawford had sat right
behind Mrs. Cunningham. How, then, could he help seeing the gold bag she
left behind, when she got out at the station just before West Sedgwick?
Indeed, who else could have seen it but the man in the seat directly
behind? Even if some one else had picked it up and carried it from the
car, Mr. Crawford must have seen it.

Moreover, why hadn't he said he was on that train? Why conceal such a
simple matter? Again, who had profited by the whole affair? And why had
Gregory Hall said: "Ask the conductor who did get off that train?"

The rose petals were already explained by Florence. If, then, Philip
Crawford had, much later, come to his brother's with the gold bag and
the late newspaper, and had gone away and left them there, and had never
told of all this, was there not a new direction in which to look?

But Philip Crawford! The dead man's own brother!

XIX. THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN

The enormity of suspecting Philip Crawford was so great, to my mind,
that I went at once to the district attorney's office for consultation
with him.

Mr. Goodrich listened to what I had to say, and then, when I waited for
comment, said quietly:

"Do you know, Mr. Burroughs, I have thought all along that Philip
Crawford was concealing something, but I didn't think, and don't think
now, that he has any guilty secret of his own. I rather fancied he
might know something that, if told, would be detrimental to Miss Lloyd's
cause."

"It may be so," I returned, "but I can't see how that would make him
conceal