The Man in Lower Ten

The Man in Lower Ten

By Mary Roberts Rinehart.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. I: I Go to Pittsburg
4. II: A Torn Telegram
5. III: Across the Aisle
6. IV: Numbers Seven and Nine
7. V: The Woman in the Next Car
8. VI: The Girl in Blue
9. VII: A Fine Gold Chain
10. VIII: The Second Section
11. IX: The Halcyon Breakfast
12. X: Miss West’s Request
13. XI: The Name Was Sullivan
14. XII: The Gold Bag
15. XIII: Faded Roses
16. XIV: The Trapdoor
17. XV: The Cinematograph
18. XVI: The Shadow of a Girl
19. XVII: At the Farmhouse Again
20. XVIII: A New World
21. XIX: At the Table Next
22. XX: The Notes and a Bargain
23. XXI: McKnight’s Theory
24. XXII: At the Boardinghouse
25. XXIII: A Night at the Laurels
26. XXIV: His Wife’s Father
27. XXV: At the Station
28. XXVI: On to Richmond
29. XXVII: The Sea, the Sand, the Stars
30. XXVIII: Alison’s Story
31. XXIX: In the Dining-Room
32. XXX: Finer Details
33. XXXI: And Only One Arm
34. Endnotes
35. List of Illustrations
36. Colophon
37. Uncopyright

Imprint

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I

I Go to Pittsburg

McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business. I never liked it, and since the strange case of the man in lower ten, I have been a bit squeamish. Given a case like that, where you can build up a network of clues that absolutely incriminate three entirely different people, only one of whom can be guilty, and your faith in circumstantial evidence dies of overcrowding. I never see a shivering, white-faced wretch in the prisoners’ dock that I do not hark back with shuddering horror to the strange events on the Pullman car Ontario, between Washington and Pittsburg, on the night of September ninth, last.

McKnight could tell the story a great deal better than I, although he can not spell three consecutive words correctly. But, while he has imagination and humor, he is lazy.

“It didn’t happen to me, anyhow,” he protested, when I put it up to him. “And nobody cares for secondhand thrills. Besides, you want the unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I’m no hand for that. I’m a lawyer.”

So am I, although there have been times when my assumption in that particular has been disputed. I am unmarried, and just old enough to dance with the grown-up little sisters of the girls I used to know. I am fond of outdoors, prefer horses to the aforesaid grown-up little sisters, am without sentiment1 and completely ruled and frequently routed by my housekeeper, an elderly widow.

In fact, of all the men of my acquaintance, I was probably the most prosaic, the least adventurous, the one man in a hundred who would be likely to go without a deviation from the normal through the orderly procession of the seasons, summer suits to winter flannels, golf to bridge.

So it was a queer freak of the demons of chance to perch on my unsusceptible thirty-year-old chest, tie me up with a crime, ticket me with a love affair, and start me on that sensational and not always respectable journey that ended so surprisingly less than three weeks later in the firm’s private office. It had been the most remarkable period of my life. I would neither give it up nor live it again under any inducement, and yet all that I lost was some twenty yards off my drive!

It was really McKnight’s turn to make the next journey. I had a tournament at Chevy Chase for Saturday, and a short yacht cruise planned for Sunday, and when a man has been grinding at statute law for a week, he needs relaxation. But McKnight begged off. It was not the first time he had shirked that summer in order to run down to Richmond, and I was surly about it. But this time he had a new excuse. “I wouldn’t be able to look after the business if I did go,” he said. He has a sort of wide-eyed frankness that makes one ashamed to doubt him. “I’m always car sick crossing the mountains. It’s a fact, Lollie. Seesawing over the peaks does it. Why, crossing the Alleghany Mountains has the Gulf Stream to Bermuda beaten to a frazzle.”

So I gave him up finally and went home to pack. He came later in the evening with his machine, the Cannonball, to take me to the station, and he brought the forged notes in the Bronson case.

“Guard them with your life,” he warned me. “They are more precious than honor. Sew them in your chest protector, or wherever people keep valuables. I never keep any. I’ll not