Fullerton, like a number of other lawyers in Waynscott, had had his office in the Equity Building, and Lyon made it convenient, in the course of his morning's tramp for news the next day, to visit the Equity. As he expected, he found Fullerton's office locked, but he hunted up the manager of the building, and persuaded him to unlock it for him. Perhaps the fact that he was a personal friend made a difference in his willingness, though he pretended to protest at what he called the morbid sensationalism of the press.

"What do you expect to get out of his empty rooms?" he asked.

"I'm working up a story," said Lyon carelessly. "I want to see what I can get in the way of personal idiosyncrasies."

The suite consisted of three rooms,--a large reception room, one side of which was covered with book-cases; a private office at the back; and, adjoining this, a room for the use of a stenographer, as was evident from the typewriter beside the window. There was so little furniture in this room that Lyon saw it could be dismissed in the special inquiry which he had in mind. In the private office a large flat desk occupied the center of the room.

"Is this room the way Fullerton left it?" Lyon asked, taking the chair which was placed before the desk, and glancing about.

"Yes. No one has been here since he left."

"No stenographer or clerk?"

"He has had no clerk for some time, and when he needed a stenographer he called one in from the agency in the building. As a matter of fact, I think his business had fallen off rather seriously in the last few years. He had lost some of his old clients, and he didn't seem to get new ones. Often his office would be locked up and he would be away for days at a time."

"Bad for business, that. Was his office rent paid?"

The manager shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "No. But I have a lien on his library, so I guess I'm safe."

"Indeed! Then he must really have been pretty badly tied up financially?"

"He was pretty obviously going to pieces. You see, his personal tastes were expensive, and they incapacitated him for business. That cut both ways, in the matter of income."

"How about his other creditors, if you have a lien on his library? That seems to be the only valuable property here."

The manager laughed again. "If there was one man here the day after he was killed there were nineteen. They were all ready to attach his books. There was some rather deep swearing. Funny what things come out about a man after he is dead."

"It's more than funny," said Lyon, with an air of saying something worth listening to. He was automatically pulling out one drawer of the desk after another, sometimes merely glancing in, sometimes lightly turning over the contents with a careless hand. "We don't know much of the personal lives of the people about us. Things are not always what they seem." He probably could have kept up the platitudinizing longer if necessary, but he had opened all the drawers. None were locked. There was no scrap of the curious greenish gray paper anywhere, nor, indeed, anything but files of documents obviously legal, and mostly dust-covered. "But his personal belongings were rather gorgeous." He opened curiously a bronze stamp box which matched the other appointments of the desk, and examined the contents. There was a lot of red stamps, but no green. That was about all that he had hoped to discover. It had seemed probable from the first that Fullerton would have his peculiar personal belongings at his own room rather than at his office, but Lyon had wished to eliminate the other possibility.

As he came out of the room, a strange and yet familiar figure passed down the hall toward the elevator just ahead of him,--the heavy figure and white head of Mr. Olden. Lyon glanced back. Lawrence's office was farther down the hall, and Lawrence's law cleric, a young fellow named Freeman, whom Lyon knew slightly, stood in the open door looking after his departing visitor with a curious watchfulness. On the impulse, Lyon turned back.

"What scrape has my most respectable landlord been getting into, that he needs legal advice?" he asked.

"Come in," said Freeman, with evident pleasure. "I'm mighty glad to have you give the old gentleman a character. I began to wonder if there wasn't something suspicious about him."

"Why?"

"He came in a few days ago and asked for Lawrence. I explained why he couldn't see him. He fumed around a little, and finally said he wanted a will drawn up, and couldn't I do it? I thought I could all right, so I got him to give me the items. It involved a lot of little bequests,--he seems to be a retired merchant from somewhere down the state with an interminable family connection,--and I took a lot of notes and told him I would have the will drawn up in a few days. He has been in every day since to make c............