VI

Marie Leroy might have been followed by other stories darker still, dirtier if possible, that would begrime them all.

The footpad theory they accepted therefore at once. Had they been able, had circumstances favored them, had the man, for instance, been shot in some way or in some place unknowable to the police, they would have arranged to have had him die decorously, if suddenly, of some genteel complaint, of appendicitis or pleuropneumonia. Then there would have been no stories, no extras, no pictures, no notoriety, no fear of that blot.

The fear subsisting, they accepted the footpad theory, glad to find it ready-made, declining to consider any other, desisting from further effort, hushing the matter as well as they could, refusing, though urged, to offer a reward.

Yet, though the theory suited them it did not satisfy the public. It was too tame. They demanded something else. That demand the press, as was its duty, attempted to supply. Through methods unfathomably vidocqesque, the young gentleman connected with the Chronicle ⁠—one of the most enterprising sheets⁠—discovered more about Loftus dead than Loftus living could himself have known. They discovered that in the panic he had dropped a bagatelle of five millions, and announced that he had committed suicide. But while at the autopsy it was not demonstrated that Loftus could not have shot himself, at the inquest it was shown that the obligatory instrument had not been found. Even to vidocqesque young gentlemen the suicide theory ceased then to appeal.

But that only deepened the mystery. To dissipate it and, at the same time, to display an endearing pro bono publicanism, the Chronicle offered a reward of five thousand dollars for such information as would lead to the arrest and conviction of the assassin.

Immediately there was a clue.