It had occupied his thoughts also almost exclusively; and though he had been trained to habits of mental precision, and the following of clues to human nature altogether beyond Miss Montressor's ken and capacity, he had not reached a much clearer state of mind than that in which his fair friend was about to join him. Bryan Duval was a man of too much natural keenness and too much acquired experience to accept generalities as bases for argument, or to seek conclusions in them. While he constructed a system with the skill and minuteness of a Procureur Impérial, he did not lend his judgment to one hypothesis, and turn the facts to fit it. Without ignoring or depreciating the influence of women in all human events, he regarded the 'Who is she?' which has become axiomatic as rather smart than sound, and was disposed to believe that dollars are quite as often to be found as women at the bottom of the crimes, as they assuredly are of the misfortunes, of men. In the present instance, if anything could be said to induce an explanation in the midst of the mystery of this crime, it was Bryan Duval's conviction that money was in question. Mr. Foster's private business in London; the disguise about his name, which he had avowed, but not explained; the perfectly conceivable rivalry and envy which his expedition might have excited--all these were plain to the mind of Bryan Duval as he pondered the matter, and they pointed each and all to another conclusion than that of 'Who is she?' Of Mr. Foster, or, as he had almost come to name the murdered man in his thoughts, Alston Griswold, he had not known very much, and their term of acquaintance had been short; but it had sufficed to create a strong regard for him, and Bryan Duval had formed a pretty accurate estimate of the New York merchant's character. 'An honest, true-hearted fellow,' said Duval to himself, 'and profoundly in love with his wife, who seems to have been equally attached to him. There was no woman in this case--no woman on either side the Atlantic. The murderer must be looked for in the ordinary category of ruffians, or if it is a put-up job, the wire-puller is here in New York among his rivals in business.' The scene and circumstances of the crime, imperfectly as they could be gathered from the newspaper reports, made a very vivid picture to the mind's eye of the dramatist, accustomed to seize upon salient points; and he thought he discerned in them tokens of a surprise and a discovery, rather than of the common assault of a robber. 'Why should he have gone with any man into an empty warehouse?' Bryan Duval asked himself. 'May he not have been enticed thither by a promise of information of some kind? May he not have been suddenly set upon and murdered, because he refused to give certain information?'