Читать книгу Under Three Flags - Bert Leston Taylor - Страница 15

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“Following along the lines of your theory,” continues Ashley, “if Ralph Felton rose from the corpse of Roger Hathaway and confronted his father upon the threshold of the cashier’s office, that dramatic meeting would explain many things. It would explain the startled glance that Cyrus Felton shot at his son—I was studying the faces of both—when the latter refused to state at the inquest where he had spent the time between 7:45 and 8:30 on the evening of Memorial Day. It would account for the carrying off of the cashier’s revolver and its subsequent burial among the waters of Wild River; for young Felton’s flight, and for the extreme agitation of the elder Felton ever since the night of the killing.”

“And,” adds Barker, “it would satisfactorily clear up the interim of fifteen minutes between the time Cyrus Felton should have reached the bank and the moment when the sheriff was notified. In fact, if the Felton family is responsible for the death of Roger Hathaway there must be some understanding between father and son. But we will now proceed to the consideration of an important character in our tragedy—Ernest Stanley.

“Two years ago, while the directors of the Raymond National Bank were holding their annual meeting, the teller stepped into the room and announced that a stranger had presented at the bank for payment a check for $1,000, signed by Cyrus Felton.

“‘Impossible!’ exclaimed that individual, who was presiding over the directors’ meeting. ‘Let me see the check.’ The teller produced it, and Felton at once declared it a forgery, and a bungling one at that. An officer was quickly summoned and Ernest Stanley, who had presented the check, was arrested.

“His trial in the Mansfield County Court was short. The forgery was proved and the young man was sentenced to three years in the state prison at Windsor. In his own defense—he had no money with which to employ a lawyer—Stanley stated that the check had been given to him two days before he presented it, by a casual acquaintance who claimed the name signed to the bit of paper. It was in payment of a gambling debt and the transaction occurred in Phil Clark’s well-known lair of the tiger on Fifth Avenue, New York.”

“Which, by the way, is no more,” puts in Ashley. “The place was closed out six months ago and Phil is now in ’Frisco.”

“It was in existence during Stanley’s trial,” resumes Barker, “and the trial was adjourned a couple of days while his improbable story was looked up. As was expected, neither Phil nor any of the habitues of his place knew of such a person as Ernest Stanley, much less such a transaction as he alleged to have occurred there.

“Stanley received his sentence calmly. Beyond stating that his age was 26 and his occupation that of a bookmaker he refused to furnish any details of his birth, early life or present residence. He served two years of his sentence and was pardoned by the governor this last Memorial Day. Strangely enough, the pardon was secured by the man whose name he was alleged to have forged—Cyrus Felton. Now, what feelings do you suppose actuated Felton in securing a remission of a year in the prisoner’s sentence? Compassion?”

“What should you say were I to suggest the word ‘remorse’?” replies Ashley.

“I should say,” declares the detective, with a smile of approval, “that you had hit upon the very word. It is plain that you foresee what I am leading up to.”

“To the theory that Stanley was innocent of the forgery and that the check was given to him by Ralph Felton?”

“Exactly. It will be difficult to prove, but if it can be proved it will have an important bearing on the Hathaway mystery. It will show Ralph Felton’s capacity for wrongdoing and will enable us to surmise to what extent Cyrus Felton would shield his son from conviction of a crime. At the time the check was presented Ralph Felton was supposed to be in New York, and as he had been for some time more or less of a trial to the old man the latter doubtless suspected in an instant what we are assuming to have been the truth. He had to decide between his son and a stranger, and, as usual, the stranger suffered.”

“What led Stanley to attempt to cash the check in Raymond?” debates Ashley.

“Well, if he was a stranger in New York he would find it impossible to cash it at any of the banks in that city. Why not run up to Raymond and cash it at the bank on which it was drawn? I forgot to say that at the trial Stanley alleged that his acquaintance of the gambling rooms claimed to be a Vermonter and appeared to have plenty of money.”

“And he did not hazard the suggestion that this acquaintance was the son of the man whose name was forged?”

“He did not know that there was a son. To prove this, if the visitor at Cyrus Felton’s house on the evening of Memorial Day was the released prisoner of Windsor, note his surprised reply to the housemaid, ‘I did not know there were two Feltons.’”

“True,” admits Ashley. “Keep along, old man.”

“If Stanley was that visitor,” pursues the detective, “his object in revisiting Raymond was to obtain revenge for the wrong that had been done him.

“When he arrived at Raymond, at 7:45, he went directly to Felton’s house. Failing to find the bank president at home, he obtained directions as to where Felton’s office was and proceeded to the bank block. The office, which is on the second story, at the south end of the block, was dark and Stanley returned to the street. As he stood in front of the bank and thought of the day, two long years before, when he stepped from its portals with a constable gripping his arm, he noticed a light in the rear. Perhaps Felton was within. So he pushed open the door and—”

“Hold on a bit. How does the bank door come to be open? You are assuming a great deal this time, Barker,” laughs Ashley.

“I am assuming that he got into the bank some way or other,” retorts the detective. “If not—and here I will quote your own words when you imparted to me your valuable discovery—‘What was Stanley doing at 6 o’clock the next morning asleep in the bushes in a lonely gorge near South Ashfield village?’

Ashley laughs merrily. “I was expecting that,” he says. “But I’ll be hanged if I will believe that an Edmond Dantes sort of a chap like Ernest Stanley is capable of—”

“Permit me to suggest that Ernest Stanley may be a cheap criminal instead of an Edmond Dantes,” interrupts Barker, with a withering sarcasm that only increases Ashley’s good humor. “We have given him a good character simply to suit our present theory. He may have really forged old Felton’s name, and his visit to Raymond may have been actuated by a base desire for revenge upon a stern justice meted out to him. Alone in the bank with Roger Hathaway and the open vault, murder and robbery may have come natural to him. We know nothing that should lead us to decide that he was a much-abused young man.”

“Yet you believe he is, I’ll wager,” asserts Ashley.

“I confess that I do. A man would be half a dozen kinds of a fool to forge the name of the president of a bank and present the check for payment at the latter’s own bank. Still what evidence we have against Stanley is strong. We can account for the flight of Derrick Ames on the simple elopement theory. We can explain the levanting of Ralph Felton on the theory that he refused to establish an alibi because it would necessitate the confession of an acquaintance with ‘Isabel Winthrop,’ when he was an ardent suitor for the hand of Helen Hathaway, and on the further supposition that he has gone to hunt for the woman he insanely loved. We can explain the nervous condition of Cyrus Felton on the assumption that he fears his son was implicated in the bank robbery and trembles for his safety. But we cannot explain why Ernest Stanley fled from Raymond the night of Memorial Day and hurried over mountain and stream and through forest, chased like a wild beast, until he found a haven of refuge. The open bank door is the break in the chain of evidence against him, and that may be mended by assuming that the cashier forgot to lock the door behind him when he entered the bank.

“We must find Stanley,” Ashley promptly declares.

“And there are others to be found,” the detective rejoins dryly. “But especially must we run down Stanley. I am convinced that he is the key to the mystery, and when we have located his position in this puzzling case I believe that the rest of the race will be plain sailing.”

“I fear it will be a long, stern chase.”

“Such chases usually are,” remarks Barker, composedly. “I have already set the machinery in motion, and the police of the entire country are on the lookout for a chap answering Stanley’s description. What makes our task the harder is the probable fact that Stanley is not a member of the criminal class, and so a comparatively easy channel of pursuit is closed. He presumably made for New York, and somewhere in that busy human hive we may run across him.”

“Then our labors at this end of the road are about completed?”

“Nearly so. To-morrow morning, before the village is astir, we will go a-fishing. If we find what we expect the case may be precipitated a bit. Otherwise we will shift the scene of our operations to New York, after I have pumped the servants in the Felton family and inquired as far as is possible into the affairs of the bank. Is your vacation about wound up?”

“It will be in a day or so. I have nothing to keep me here longer except a pleasant duty that I owe to myself.”

“And that is—”

“To make an unprofessional call upon Miss Louise Hathaway.”

“Ho! Sits the wind in that quarter?” laughs the detective.

“Don’t be absurd, my friend,” smiles Ashley. “Miss Hathaway interests me only as would a statue of the Venus de Milo.”

“Indeed? Still, men have lost their hearts to a statue.”

“In books and plays. If we are to arise at daybreak I would suggest the advisability of retiring.”