Читать книгу Under Three Flags - Bert Leston Taylor - Страница 12

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After supper Ashley retreats to the most secluded corner of the veranda and amuses himself blowing smoke rings over the railing. Barker has been gone ever since morning. He must have struck a warm trail. Twilight gathers ere Ashley beholds the familiar figure swinging down the street toward the hotel.

The detective draws a chair beside that of Ashley, and, after making certain that no listeners are about, remarks complacently: “My boy, I believe we are on the trail of Roger Hathaway’s murderer.”

“Indeed! I confess that I am deeper in the woods of speculation than ever.”

“Ah, but when I give you the result of my day’s work I think you will find yourself out of the forest and on the broad highway of conviction.”

“Then you must have put in a more profitable afternoon than I spent, and I accomplished considerable. Had your supper?”

“No. Guess I’ll run in and have supper and then we’ll adjourn to my room for a smoke talk.”

Half an hour later finds the New Yorkers comfortably settled in Barker’s second-floor.

“I may as well state at the outset that, as you intimated when you introduced yourself last evening, I am not a Sherlock Holmes,” begins Barker. “But I have had considerable experience in ferreting out criminals. A good memory for faces, an extensive acquaintance with the brilliants and lesser lights of the crook world, a knack of putting two and two together with a view to obtaining four as a result, more or less analytical abilities, an excellent physique, a fair amount of sand and an unlimited stock of patience are my qualifications for the profession upon which I have thus far brought no discredit.”

“Pretty good stock in trade, I should say,” comments Ashley.

“Thank you. Now, every detective waits patiently for what he regards as his big case. I think this Hathaway affair is mine—or ours, as we are working together. Now, I’ll get down to business and tell you what I have discovered to-day. We may as well begin with a comprehensive study of the cast of characters. Unfortunately, three of the leading ones are beyond our reach.”

“Then you figure Derrick Ames extensively in the case?”

“Rather. We will begin with him and consider his probable relation to what is destined to be a celebrated case.

“It is unfortunate that the people in the world whose photographs one is likely to want at some time or another are the very people who seldom run to pictures,” resumes Barker. “There isn’t a picture of Ames in existence. So far as known he never had one taken. Nor are there any photos of Helen Hathaway to be had. The only portraits of her in existence are the miniature in the locket missing from the dead cashier’s watch-chain and a crayon portrait which, I am informed, hangs in a room at her late home.

“I find that Ames was regarded as an odd stick by the discriminating inhabitants of Raymond—principally because he did not associate with them more than was absolutely necessary. He is said to be well educated and is of a high-strung, poetic temperament. Heaven knows how he came to locate in such a prosy town as Raymond, but the explanation of his remaining here as long as he did is simpler; he was apparently devoted to Helen Hathaway. I say apparently for want of knowledge of what his exact sentiments were. Of his early history I learned little, save that he came here some three years ago from New York State, studied law with a local counsellor, and finally took an excellent position with the Vermont Life Insurance Company.

“Oddly enough, the one male companion that Ames chose was a chap about as opposite in temperament and every other way as one can imagine. Sam Brockway is the name of the fellow, and he is employed as a cutter in the sheds of the Wild River Granite Company. And Ames hunted him up only when he got into one of his periodical fits of the blues, and the two would start off on a racket that would last several days. It was this habit of drinking, combined with a cynical skepticism upon matters and things dear to the heart of a deacon, that made Ames objectionable to Mr. Hathaway, and the antipathy was cordially returned. Helen, however, was a loyal little woman, and despite her father’s commands she continued her intimacy with Ames. An elopement was a logical sequence of such a companionship, and were it not for certain damning evidence that I extracted from this Brockway and discovered myself, I should dismiss Ames, temporarily at least, as having no connection with the bank case.”

“Yet you say Brockway is a friend of Ames’,” remarks Ashley.

“He is. But while a good-hearted chap and loyalty itself, he is not especially astute and by shrewd questioning and judicious bluffing I discovered that he was probably the last man who saw Ames before he disappeared from Raymond, Roger Hathaway excepted.”

“You mean—”

“I mean that Derrick Ames was seen to enter the Raymond National Bank about 8 o’clock on the evening of Memorial Day.”

“H’m! That is serious. Yet his mission may have been an innocent one.”

“True. But to continue. This forenoon I visited the station at Ashfield, where Ames and the girl—there can be no question that they were the pair—boarded the night express south. While I was lounging about the station, waiting for the train back to Raymond, my eye caught the glitter of an object lying between the inside rail of the track and the south end of the platform, and partly under the latter. It was a revolver, 32 caliber, and one chamber was empty. With that for a basis, I questioned the station agent on another tack, and he finally succeeded in remembering that just as the train pulled into the station that memorable night the girl handed Ames his coat, and as he threw it over his arm an object dropped from one of the pockets, which Ames quickly recovered and replaced in the coat as he and his companion clambered aboard the train. Might not this revolver have been the object dropped by Ames, and might he not when he put it back in his coat have slipped it into the sleeve, through which it dropped as he stepped upon the train?”

“Well, the theory is ingenious, even if wrong,” muses Ashley.

“I clinched it a bit more,” continues Barker. “Where had Ames and the girl boarded the train? The station agent remembered that it was at the south end of the platform, as the New York sleeper was made up next behind the engine and baggage car.”

“I beg to remark,” puts in Ashley, “that the fact of one chamber in a revolver being empty is not at all unusual. I have in my pocket a gun in that condition, but as it is a 38 caliber, that lets me out of any connection with the tragedy.”

“Of course,” smiles Barker, “I take all these bits of evidence for what they are worth. While waiting for my train I argued in this wise: Derrick Ames was in love with Helen Hathaway, and the attachment resulted in an elopement. Neither was seen after 2 o’clock of Memorial Day, and the inference is that they were together somewhere all the afternoon and evening. The elopement was apparently unpremeditated, as they took nothing with them, so far as known, except the clothes they wore. There must have been some cause for such an impromptu exit. People do not elope that way no matter how love-mad they may be. Where was Helen when Ames was seen going into the bank? Waiting for him somewhere. What was his errand? To make a final appeal for the girl’s hand, with an elopement in mind as the last resort, perhaps. But even failing in that, why elope that particular night? There must have been a cause for hurrying him away. But if you assume that Ames committed the crime, even as the upshot of a fierce quarrel, even perhaps in self-defense, you must figure him a moral monstrosity, for only such could strike down a father and elope subsequently with the daughter. And then there is the missing money. You see it argues a villainy more despicable than a man like Ames could have been guilty of.”

“Yet pathology records even more singular instances of moral distortion.”

“Even so. But is it not more reasonable to believe that Ames may have been only a witness to the murder, or a spectator on the scene of the tragedy after it had occurred, and that he was hurried away by the horror of the affair? But in either event would he not have argued that to fly would be the worst possible thing he could do? I confess that when I arrived at Raymond I was in doubt as to Ames’ possible guilt, but my afternoon’s investigations have about convinced me that Derrick Ames had nothing to do with the death of Cashier Hathaway.”

“Then you must have substituted some other person as the object of your suspicion.”

“Yes; but the substitution is not especially recent. Before I give you the result of my afternoon labors let me tell you of a discovery that I made yesterday, not three hours after my arrival in town.

“After I had posted myself from the stenographic notes of the inquest I dropped into the bank to have a talk with the officials. President Felton took me into the directors’ room, where the tragedy occurred, and I sat in the cashier’s chair and glanced around to get a few bearings. While Felton was retelling his story of the finding of Hathaway’s body I toyed with a blotter on the desk. It was the ordinary blotter, larger than the average, with the advertisement of an insurance company on one side. As I glanced carelessly at it I noticed that it had taken up the ink of some unusually plain characters.

“Felton was called out of the room for a moment and I slipped the blotter in my pocket to examine it at my leisure. When I returned to the hotel I made an investigation, and I discovered—but I will let you see for yourself. Hand me that small mirror on the wall.”

Ashley does so. The detective takes his prize from a bundle of papers in his pocket, smooths it flat on the table, and places the mirror perpendicularly before it. Then he draws the lamp over and remarks complacently: “Look here upon this picture!”

And this is what Ashley sees as he gazes upon the reflecting surface. There are three groups of characters. The first group reads:

“Come to the bank immediately—”

The second:

“Your personal account overdrawn—”

And the third:

“These things I charge you fail not, Cyrus Felton, at the peril of your good name.Roger Hathaway.”

“Jove! It reads like an accusation!” cries Ashley, dropping back into his chair.

“It is an accusation!” declares the detective, with the ring of triumph in his voice.