tine here showed me this fragment pressed out between two
oblong pieces of heavy plate glass. I glanced at it a few minutes, and
then placed it beside the buttons for future examination.

"Among the few scraps of paper found," resumed Mr. Bannatine, "was
another one, which we found under George's body, saturated with blood.
The murderer had evidently destroyed every piece of paper that he could
find; but this one had probably been lying on the floor, and when George
fell, it was hidden by his body. This, and the note, were the only
papers found on the desks or about the floor of the bank which had any
writing upon them; even the waste paper baskets and their contents had
been burned. Here is the paper, Mr. Pinkerton; we have preserved it
carefully, because we thought that it might suggest something to a
detective, though it had no special significance to us."

He handed me the paper, as he spoke. It was a fragment of letter paper,
about three by six inches in size. It was stained a brownish red by poor
young Gordon's lifeblood; but beneath the stain, were plainly visible
the pen marks of the murdered man. It had a number of figures on one
side, arranged like examples in addition, though they were scattered
carelessly, as if he had been checking off balances, and had used this
fragment to verify his additions. The reverse side was blank. I laid
this paper beside the note, and Mr. Bannatine continued his story:

"We then opened the safe, and counted the money; this was easily done,
for we found that all the loose money was gone, leaving only a small
quantity of coin and a number of packages of bills. These latter were
put up in lots of five thousand dollars each, and were wrapped in a
bright red tissue paper. George had put up over one hundred thousand
dollars in this way, about a week before, and the murderer had not
touched these packages at all; we were thus spared a loss, which would
have somewhat crippled us. As it was, the loss in bills amounted to
about one hundred and five thousand dollars, while exactly twenty-eight
thousand dollars in gold eagles and double eagles, were also missing. A
few days after the murder, one of Col. Garnett's slaves found two
twenty-dollar gold pieces at an old fording place on Rocky Creek, just
outside the city, and we came to the conclusion that the robber had
dropped them there; but of course, we could not identify gold pieces,
and so we could not be sure. The coroner closed the inqu