The Man in Lower Ten | Page 4

smoke wouldn't be Pittsburg, any more than New
York prohibition would be New York. Sit down for a few minutes, Mr.
Blakeley. Now, Miss Gardner, Westinghouse Electric."
The nurse resumed her reading in a monotonous voice. She read
literally and without understanding, using initials and abbreviations as
they came. But the shrewd old man followed her easily. Once, however,
he stopped her.
"D-o is ditto," he said gently, "not do."
As the nurse droned along, I found myself looking curiously at a
photograph in a silver frame on the bed-side table. It was the picture of
a girl in white, with her hands clasped loosely before her. Against the
dark background her figure stood out slim and young. Perhaps it was
the rather grim environment, possibly it was my mood, but although as
a general thing photographs of young girls make no appeal to me, this
one did. I found my eyes straying back to it. By a little finesse I even

made out the name written across the corner, "Alison."
Mr. Gilmore lay back among his pillows and listened to the nurse's
listless voice. But he was watching me from under his heavy eyebrows,
for when the reading was over, and we were alone, he indicated the
picture with a gesture.
"I keep it there to remind myself that I am an old man," he said. "That
is my granddaughter, Alison West."
I expressed the customary polite surprise, at which, finding me
responsive, he told me his age with a chuckle of pride. More surprise,
this time genuine. From that we went to what he ate for breakfast and
did not eat for luncheon, and then to his reserve power, which at
sixty-five becomes a matter for thought. And so, in a wide circle, back
to where we started, the picture.
"Father was a rascal," John Gilmore said, picking up the frame. "The
happiest day of my life was when I knew he was safely dead in bed and
not hanged. If the child had looked like him, I - well, she doesn't. She's
a Gilmore, every inch. Supposed to look like me."
"Very noticeably," I agreed soberly.
I had produced the notes by that time, and replacing the picture Mr.
Gilmore gathered his spectacles from beside it. He went over the four
notes methodically, examining each carefully and putting it down
before he picked up the next. Then he leaned back and took off his
glasses.
"They're not so bad," he said thoughtfully. "Not so bad. But I never saw
them before. That's my unofficial signature. I am inclined to think - "
he was speaking partly to himself - "to think that he has got hold of a
letter of mine, probably to Alison. Bronson was a friend of her
rapscallion of a father."
I took Mr. Gilmore's deposition and put it into my traveling-bag with
the forged notes. When I saw them again, almost three weeks later, they

were unrecognizable, a mass of charred paper on a copper ashtray. In
the interval other and bigger things had happened: the Bronson forgery
case had shrunk beside the greater and more imminent mystery of the
man in lower ten. And Alison West had come into the story and into
my life.
CHAPTER II
A TORN TELEGRAM
I lunched alone at the Gilmore house, and went back to the city at once.
The sun had lifted the mists, and a fresh summer wind had cleared
away the smoke pall. The boulevard was full of cars flying
countryward for the Saturday half-holiday, toward golf and tennis,
green fields and babbling girls. I gritted my teeth and thought of
McKnight at Richmond, visiting the lady with the geographical name.
And then, for the first time, I associated John Gilmore's granddaughter
with the "West" that McKnight had irritably flung at me.
I still carried my traveling-bag, for McKnight's vision at the window of
the empty house had not been without effect. I did not transfer the notes
to my pocket, and, if I had, it would not have altered the situation later.
Only the other day McKnight put this very thing up to me.
"I warned you," he reminded me. "I told you there were queer things
coming, and to be on your guard. You ought to have taken your
revolver."
"It would have been of exactly as much use as a bucket of snow in
Africa," I retorted. "If I had never closed my eyes, or if I had kept my
finger on the trigger of a six-shooter (which is novelesque for revolver),
the result would have been the same. And the next time you want a
little excitement with every variety of thrill thrown in, I can put you by
way of it. You begin by getting the wrong berth in a