The Odds and Ends

It was no place for an elderly spinster. I retired to my upstairs
sitting-room and got out Eliza Klinefelter's lavender slippers. Ah,
well, the foster motherhood would soon have to be put away in camphor
again.

The next day, by degrees, I got the whole story.

Paul Armstrong had a besetting evil--the love of money. Common enough,
but he loved money, not for what it would buy, but for its own sake.
An examination of the books showed no irregularities in the past year
since John had been cashier, but before that, in the time of Anderson,
the old cashier, who had died, much strange juggling had been done with
the records. The railroad in New Mexico had apparently drained the
banker's private fortune, and he determined to retrieve it by one
stroke. This was nothing less than the looting of the bank's
securities, turning them into money, and making his escape.

But the law has long arms. Paul Armstrong evidently studied the
situation carefully. Just as the only good Indian is a dead Indian, so
the only safe defaulter is a dead defaulter. He decided to die, to all
appearances, and when the hue and cry subsided, he would be able to
enjoy his money almost anywhere he wished.

The first necessity was an accomplice. The connivance of Doctor Walker
was suggested by his love for Louise. The man was unscrupulous, and
with the girl as a bait, Paul Armstrong soon had him fast. The plan
was apparently the acme of simplicity: a small town in the west, an
attack of heart disease, a body from a medical college dissecting-room
shipped in a trunk to Doctor Walker by a colleague in San Francisco,
and palmed off for the supposed dead banker. What was simpler?