Mr. Coulson set down his suitcase for a moment, to light a cigar.
“Well, if I did know the poor fellow just to nod to,” he said, “I don’t see that’s any reason why I should talk about him to you newspaper fellows. You’d better get hold of his relations, if you can find them.”
“But, my dear Mr. Coulson,” the young man said, “we haven’t any idea where they are to be found, and in the meantime you can’t imagine what reports are in circulation.”
“Guess I can figure them out pretty well,” Mr. Coulson remarked with a smile. “We’ve got an evening press of our own in New York.”
The reporter nodded.
“Well,” he said, “They’d be able to stretch themselves out a bit on a case like this. You see,” he continued confidentially, “we are up against something almost unique. Here is an astounding and absolutely inexplicable murder, committed in a most dastardly fashion by a person who appears to have vanished from the face of the earth. Not a single thing is known about the victim except his name. We do not know whether he came to England on business or pleasure. He may, in short, have been any one from a millionaire to a newspaper man. Judging from his special train,” the reporter concluded with a smile, “and the money which was found upon him, I imagine that he was certainly not the latter.”
Mr. Coulson went on his way toward the exit from the station, puffing contentedly at his big cigar.
“Well,” he said to his companion, who showed not the slightest disposition to leave his side, “it don’t seem to me that there’s much worth repeating about poor Fynes—much that I knew, at any rate. Still, if you like to get in a cab with me and ride as far as the Savoy, I’ll tell you what I can.”
“You are a brick, sir,” the young man declared. “Haven’t you any luggage, though?”
“I checked what I had through from Liverpool to the hotel,” Mr. Coulson answered. “I can’t stand being fussed around by all these porters, and having to go and take pot luck amongst a pile of other people’s baggage. We’ll just take one of these two-wheeled sardine tins that you people call hansoms, and get round to the hotel as quick as we can. There are a few pals of mine generally lunch in the cafe there, and they mayn’t all have cleared out if we look alive.”
They started a moment or two later. Mr. Coulson leaned forward and, folding his arms upon the apron of the cab, looked about him with interest.
“Say,” he remarked, removing his cigar to the corner of his mouth in order to facilitate conversation, “this old city of yours don’t change any.”
“Not up in this part, perhaps,” the reporter agreed. “We’ve some fine new buildings down toward the Strand.”
Mr. Coulson nodded.
“Well,” he said, “I guess you don’t want to be making conversation. You want to know about Hamilton Fynes. I was just acquainted with him, and that’s a fact, but I reckon you’ll have to find some one who knows a good deal more than I do before you’ll get the stuff you want for your paper.”
“The slightest particulars are of interest to us just now,” the reporter reminded him.
Mr. Coulson nodded.
“Hamilton Fynes,” he said, “so far as I knew him, was a quiet, inoffensive sort of creature, who has been drawing a regular salary from the State for the last fifteen years and saving half of it. He has been coming over to Europe now and then, and though he was a good, steady chap enough, he liked his fling when he was over here, and between you and me, he was the greatest crank I ever struck. I met him in London a matter of three years ago, and he wanted to go to Paris. There were two cars running at the regular time, meeting the boat at Dover. Do you think he would have anything to do with them? Not he! He hired a special train and went down like a prince.”
“What did he do that for?” the reporter asked.
“Why, because he was a crank, sir,” Mr. Coulson answered confidentially. “There was no other reason at all. Take this last voyage on the Lusitania, now. He spoke to me the first day out because he couldn’t help it, but for pretty well the rest of the journey he either kept down in his stateroom or, when he came up on deck, he avoided me and everybody else. When he did talk, his talk was foolish. He was a good chap at his work, I believe, but he was a crank. Seemed to me sometimes as though that humdrum life of his had about turned his brain. The last day out he was fidgeting all the time; kept looking at his watch, studying the chart, and asking the sailors questions. Said he wanted to get up in time to take a girl to lunch on Thursday. It was just for that reason that he scuttled off the boat without a word to any of us, and rushed up to London.”
“But he had letters, Mr. Coulson,” the reporter reminded him, “from some one in Washington, to the captain of the steamer and to the station-master of the London and North Western Railway. It seems rather odd that he should have provided himself with these, doesn’t it?”
“They were easy enough to get,” Mr. Coulson answered. “He wasn’t a worrying sort of chap, Fynes wasn’t. He did his work, year in and year out, and asked no favors. The consequence was that when he asked a queer one he got it all right. It’s easier to get a pull over there than it is here, you know.”
“This is all very interesting,” the reporter said, “and I am sure I’m very much obliged to you, Mr. Coulson. Now can you tell me of anything in the man’s life or way of living likely to provoke enmity on the part of any one? This murder was such a cold-blooded affair.”
“There I’m stuck,” Mr. Coulson admitted. “There’s only one thing I can tell you, and that is that I believe he had a lot more money on him than the amount mentioned in your newspapers this morning. My own opinion is that he was murdered for what he’d got. A smart thief would say that a fellow who takes a special tug off the steamer and a special train to town was a man worth robbing. How the thing was done I don’t know—that’s for your police to find out—but I reckon that whoever killed him did it for his cash.”
The reporter sighed. He was, after all, a little disappointed. Mr. Coulson was obviously a man of common sense. His words were clearly pronounced, and his reasoning sound. They had reached the courtyard of the hotel now, and the reporter began to express his gratitude.
“My first drink on English soil,” Mr. Coulson said, as he handed his suitcase to the hall-porter, “is always—”
“It’s on me,” the young man declared quickly. “I owe you a good deal more than drinks, Mr. Coulson.”
“Well, come along, anyway,” the latter remarked. “I guess my room is all right, porter?”—turning to the man who stood by his side, bag in hand. “I am Mr. James B. Coulson of New York, and I wrote on ahead. I’ll come round to the office and register presently.”
They made their way to the American bar. The newspaper man and his new friend drank together and, skillfully prompted by the former, the conversation drifted back to the subject of Hamilton Fynes. There was nothing else to be learned, however, in the way of facts. Mr. Coulson admitted that he had been a little nettled by his friend’s odd manner during the voyage, and the strange way he had of keeping to himself.
“But, after all,” he wound up, “Fynes was a crank, when all’s said and done. We are all cranks, more or less—all got our weak spot, I mean. It was secretiveness with our unfortunate friend. He liked to play at being a big personage in a mysterious sort of way, and the poor chap’s paid for it,” he added with a sigh.
The reporter left his new-made friend a short time afterwards, and took a hansom to his office. His newspaper at once issued a special edition, giving an interview between their representative and Mr. James B. Coulson, a personal friend of the murdered man. It was, after all, something of a scoop, for not one of the other passengers had been found who was in a position to say anything at all about him. The immediate effect of the