CHAPTER XVIII.

BARKER DECIDES TO STRIKE.

“Well, my boy,” begins Barker, “it’s a long lane that has no turn, and I think we have reached the beginning of the end of this Hathaway mystery. There is the weapon that sent Roger Hathaway to eternity Memorial Day of last year,” handing it to Ashley, with a complacent air. “I am not a betting man, or I would wager a reasonable sum that, ere the anniversary of the crime rolls around, the murderer will be safely incarcerated in the Mansfield County jail in Vermont.”

Ashley examines curiously the weapon Barker has produced. It is an ordinary 32-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver, of the bull-dog variety, covered with rust, and all of the five chambers, with possibly one exception, contain unused cartridges.

“Yes, there is one empty chamber,” responds Barker, as Ashley attempts ineffectually to turn the rusty cylinder, “and that sent poor old Hathaway out of the world. And now I will tell you of some important clews that I have succeeded in running down since I saw you last.

“You know I subscribed for the Raymond local newspaper, and a mighty good investment that $1.25 proved. Week before last the paper contained a local item about a boy’s finding a revolver on the bank of Wild River. It was only a ten-to-one shot that the revolver picked up by the river bank was Hathaway’s missing gun, but I took the short end and posted off to Raymond. The result of my trip you now hold in your hand.

“The little chap who found the revolver had picked it up close to the opposite bank from which it had been thrown. It was quite a stretch beyond the deep pool that we explored. You see I was fully a hundred yards from Felton when he hurled the revolver into the stream, and I miscalculated the force he put into the throw. His feeling of loathing for the hateful weapon was such that he hurled it nearly across the river. Even then, it would have been covered by two or three feet of water had not the river been dammed last fall, a few rods above the place, to furnish power for a sawmill. That left only an inch or two of water over the revolver, and little Jimmy Jones, or whatever his name was, found it there while prowling about the river bank. It is Roger Hathaway’s revolver, too, beyond a doubt. I had Sibley, who was teller of the bank, and who has seen it in Hathaway’s desk a thousand times, examine it, and he positively identifies it.

“So far, so good. That revolver rivets a mighty strong link, I take it, to the chain we have already forged about Cyrus Felton. But the situation had become somewhat complicated, I found after I secured possession of the revolver. Felton has skipped from Raymond, taking the Hathaway girl with him, and evidently does not intend to return for some time, if indeed at all. Consequently our next and most imperative duty is to find where he now is and see that he does not get beyond our reach.”

“I can do that in five minutes,” Ashley quietly assures the detective. “Cyrus Felton and Miss Louise Hathaway are now at the St. James hotel in this city. They sail for Cuba next Saturday.”

“Good,” remarks the phlegmatic Barker. “That is luck on a par with finding the revolver. But when Cyrus Felton leaves New York it will be to go back to Vermont. Bound for Cuba, eh? Why did he select that country instead of Europe, I wonder?”

“Because his son is in Cuba. Barker, I opine that it will be necessary for both of us to revise our theories of the murder,” continues Ashley. “In the judgment of the undersigned, both Feltons, father and son, are equally implicated in that crime. As to which actually fired the fatal shot, I am not prepared to say. But I am confident that both were in the bank when Hathaway was shot. I learned to-day that there is a young American, a planter, in Cuba who has joined the Spanish army as an officer on the staff of the captain-general. His name is, or was, Felton. Now comes the senior Felton, en route to Cuba. Why should he go to Cuba just at this time while the island is in the throes of insurrection? He tells Miss Hathaway that he has business interests there—a sugar plantation. Isn’t it clear that he is going to join his son?”

Barker taps his forehead reflectively. “The idea is plausible,” he admits. “But what in the name of the great hornspoon is he taking Miss Hathaway there for? It isn’t possible that he is so cold-blooded, so absolutely devoid of conscience, that he would wed the daughter of the man he had slain?”

“Decidedly not,” returns Ashley, with very like a snort of disgust at the suggestion of the possibility of Louise Hathaway becoming Cyrus Felton’s wife. “Miss Hathaway is Felton’s ward, and of course he is obliged to take her with him. Besides she herself is anxious to go to Cuba. She told me so this afternoon.”

“Anxious to go herself, eh?” repeats Barker. “Well, there is no accounting for tastes. I think if I were going on a pleasure trip, however, I should select some other spot than that home of Yellow Jack and the machete. But”—the detective’s forehead is wrinkled in thought—“you don’t suppose she has any friends in Cuba whom she is anxious to see—her sister or Derrick Ames?”

Ashley considers this possibility a moment. “It is possible,” he exclaims. “She admitted she had received letters from her sister, who was well and happy—but not in this country, she said at first, and then changed it to ‘not in this section of the country.’ Ames and her sister may be in Cuba, as well as Ralph Felton; but not, I will wager a good deal, in the same vicinity—not, at least, if Ames knows it. Barker, it seems to me that instead of this matter becoming simplified it is daily growing more complicated. The thing for us to do is to cut the Gordian knot at once and bring matters to a climax.”

“There is only one way to do it.”

“Exactly. Arrest Cyrus Felton, and charge him with being the murderer of Roger Hathaway, or an accomplice before or after the act.”

Barker picks up the revolver again.

“We have got a good deal of strong evidence against him,” he says, slowly; “yet I should like to get the son in the same net. With the two of them jointly accused and jointly tried I am certain we could unravel the mystery. I have evidence against the elder Felton that I have not yet told you; in fact, what I consider as a sufficient motive for the crime. The absence of a good, healthy motive, you know, was the weak link in our chain.

“The president of those two banks, I am convinced, was short in his accounts with both institutions. In other words, he had used the bank’s securities to tide over his own financial affairs, which I have discovered, were not in the flourishing condition supposed. Although he was aware that Felton’s accounts were overdrawn, as was evidenced by the writing on the blotter, Hathaway was apparently ignorant of the fact that the president had taken many of the bank’s securities and hypothecated them for his own account. That was done by the president through the connivance of his son, the bookkeeper. Get the idea?”

Ashley nods.

“Now then: You will recall that Cyrus Felton told you, after the murder, that nearly $50,000 in available cash and about half as much more in securities had been stolen. He testified at the inquest that some securities had been taken. My theory is that not one single one of those securities was taken from the bank that night. ’Cause why? Because they had previously been extracted by Cyrus Felton and his son. And the cash? That, I believe was Ralph Felton’s share for his part in the tragedy. Perhaps father and son had planned for the latter to rob the bank that night—the former anxious for the covering up of the loss of the securities, the latter covetous of the money. The time was drawing near when the annual examination of the savings bank was due. It was to have taken place in June. Then the discovery that many of the ‘jackets’ that should contain securities were empty was inevitable. But Cashier Hathaway was at the bank that night. The son may have been concealed in that closet, awaiting his opportunity. The cashier, no longer willing to permit the president’s overdrafts, wrote that imperative note to Cyrus Felton. The latter visited the bank. An altercation ensued. Heated words were uttered. Hathaway may have discovered the loss of the securities. The president and cashier, old men both, engaged in a scuffle. Perhaps the president sought to wrest the key to the vault from the cashier’s hands. At any rate, a struggle. Ralph Felton leaped from his hiding-place, and seizing the cashier’s revolver, which he knew was kept in the desk, rushed to the assistance of his father. The fatal shot, and—father and son gazed in dismay at each other across the dead body of the faithful cashier. The rest is simple of explanation—the rifling of the vault and the subsequent flight of the son. Ashley, that is my revised theory of the murder of Roger Hathaway. What do you think of it?”

“It is worthy of your perspecuity, Barker, and in some respects it appears flawless. Yet—well, sometimes I have a sort of intuition that we are off the right track altogether. Ah, Barker, if we could but find that chap I saw in the bushes that morning, Ernest Stanley. Now that you have revised your theory, and in the light of recent developments, I feel more than ever that Stanley possesses the key that will unlock the inner doors of the mystery.

“However, that is neither here nor there, for Ernest Stanley has as completely vanished as though the earth had opened and swallowed him up. It is almost inexplicable.”

“No stranger than the fading away of Derrick Ames and Helen Hathaway. You know we traced them to this city, and the most searching investigation by both the metropolitan police and our own men could not find them or ascertain for a certainty whether they went west or east.

“But to return to the Feltons. Those two missing leaves from the bank ledger could a tale unfold, I fancy, in relation to Cyrus Felton’s precise relations with the bank. Yes, on the whole, I believe we have sufficient evidence to strike. He is at the St. James, you say? I guess I had better arrest him at once, and then, if he declines to go back to Vermont without extradition papers, I can proceed to Montpelier to-morrow and get the necessary documents in season to start back to Raymond by Friday—unlucky day for him, I fancy. Well, old man, you will have to spill a whole bottle of ink on this, I suppose. Will you spring the full story in the morning?”

Jack starts suddenly. “By Jove!” he exclaims, looking at the detective, with a rueful glance, “it seems like a brutally cold-blooded thing to say, but do you know, I have invited Felton and Miss Hathaway to look in on the French ball to-morrow evening, and now—if the deed wasn’t an apparent refinement of cruelty, I would ask you to postpone the arrest of Felton till day after to-morrow.”

“You are positive he does not contemplate sailing for Cuba till Saturday?” inquires Barker.

“So Miss Hathaway said. And, yes.” Jack’s eye has run hastily down the advertised dates of sailings in the Hemisphere. “The Mallory Line steamer, City of Callao, sails for Havana and the West Indies on Saturday. That is the steamer they are evidently booked for. But to make assurance doubly sure I will telephone to the office of the steamship line and ascertain if staterooms have been secured for them.”

Barker nods approvingly at the precaution.

“Yes,” the reply comes over the wire, “Mr. Cyrus Felton and Miss Hathaway are booked for the Callao.”

“For Havana?”

“Yes; for Havana.”

“That settles that, then,” observes Barker, cheerfully. “Felton can enjoy his little fling at the garden, and subsequently have something to think about while he awaits the action of the grand jury.”

Inured as he is to tragic scenes and happenings, Jack winces slightly at thought of the part he expects to play in acting as the “guide, philosopher and friend” of Cyrus Felton on probably his last night of liberty.

“By the way,” he remarks, “you said Felton had made preparations for an extended absence from Raymond. Did he cause that to become generally known in the town?”

“Per contra, as the lawyers say, no one in Raymond had any idea that he contemplated a trip to Cuba, understanding that he is off on a business trip to New York. A little judicious investigation revealed the fact that he had quietly severed every business tie that should connect him with Raymond. Even his house, I found, he has mortgaged to the chimneys, and then leased for a period of ten years to a western man, to whom, by the way, he has disposed of his interest in the quarries. His share in the bank block he sold two months ago, taking a mortgage for two-thirds the purchase price, but this mortgage he last week transferred to the Vermont Life Insurance Company, receiving cash therefor. Even his horses have been shipped to Boston and sold. All this Felton has accomplished so quietly that, as I said before, no one in Raymond suspects that he is not as deeply interested financially in the town as ever.

“Well, on the whole,” finishes Barker, “I am glad we have concluded to postpone the arrest a couple of days, for I have some personal matters I must attend to. What have you on hand to-night?”

“Just an hour or so at the Madison Square Garden. Come to dinner with me and we’ll go to the Garden together. I want to talk this matter over further,” says Ashley.

Barker acquiesces, and as the newspaper man leads the way to the street he murmurs to himself:

“So the blow falls on Wednesday. Well, it will make one of the most interesting ‘beats’ in the history of the Hemisphere and I guess I had better begin on the story to-night.”