placed it carefully, as if to hide it, under various articles
of apparel, set the springs of the vicious steel-trap, and, leaving the
suitcase open as before, took a turn around the room.

All this business was merely for the benefit of the man whom he knew to
be watching from over the door. Starting as if to undress, he paused,
appeared to remember something left neglected, and hastened from his
room, purposely leaving the door more than half-way ajar. Down the
hall he strode, to the office, where he looked on the register and
discovered the name of his neighbor--John Brown--an obvious alias.

He had hardly been thus engaged for two minutes when the faint, far-off
sound of a ringing bell came distinctly to his ears.

"My alarm-clock's gone off," he said to the man at the desk, and he
fled up the hall like a sprinter.

A clatter of sounds, as of someone struggling, had come before he
reached his room. As he bounded in he beheld his suit-case, over at
the window, jerking against the sash and sill as if possessed of evil
spirits. No thief was visible. The fellow, with the trap upon his
fingers, had already leaped to the ground.

Within a yard of his captured burglar Garrison beheld the suit-case
drop, and his man had made good his escape.

He thrust his head outside the window, but the darkness was in favor of
the thief, who was not to be seen.

Chagrined to think Mr. "Brown" had contrived to get loose, Garrison
took up the case, carried it back to the bureau, and opened it up, by
skillfully releasing the springs. Three small patches of finger-skin
were left in the bite of its jaws--cards of the visitor left as
announcements of his visit.

The room next door was not again occupied that night. The hotel saw no
more of Mr. Brown.

CHAPTER VI

THE CORONER

Not in the least reassured, but considerably aroused in all his
instincts by these further developments of a night already full of
mysterious transactions, Garrison, after a futile watch for his
neighbor, once more plunged into a study of the case in which he found
himself involved.

Vaguely he remembered to have noticed that the man who had come here to
Branchville with him on the train carried no baggage. He had no doubt
the man had been close upon his trail for some considerable time; but
why, and what he wanted, could not be so readily determined. Certain
the man had extracted Ailsa's letter from the pocket of the case, yet
half convinced