I thought it
possibly evidential, and I asked Dixon about it. He explained it by
saying that he did not have a copy of his reply, but as near as he
could recall, he wrote that the compound would not cure a headache
except at the expense of reducing heart action dangerously. He says he
sent no prescription. Indeed, he thought it a scheme to extract advice
without incurring the charge for an office call and answered it only
because he thought Vera had become reconciled to Thurston again. I
can't find that letter of Thurston's. It is gone."
We looked at each other in amazement.
"Why, if Dixon contemplated anything against Miss Lytton, should he
preserve this letter from her?" mused Kennedy. "Why didn't he destroy
it?"
"That's what puzzles me," remarked Leland. "Do you suppose some one
has broken in and substituted this Lytton letter for the Thurston
letter?"
Kennedy was scrutinizing the letter, saying nothing. "I may keep it?"
he asked at length. Leland was quite willing and even undertook to
obtain some specimens of the writing of Vera Lytton. With these and
the letter Kennedy was working far into the night and long after I had
passed into a land troubled with many wild dreams of deadly poisons
and secret intrigues of artists.
The next morning a message from our old friend First Deputy O'Connor
in New York told briefly of locating the rooms of an artist named
Thurston in one of the co-operative studio apartments. Thurston
himself had not been there for several days and was reported to have
gone to Maine to sketch.
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