“Then affairs are shaping themselves advantageously for our purpose. Our command will go to Jibana this evening, but I don’t want any collision there. See the position of the game. Van Zandt, if he is Stanley, is tracking the son through the father, and I am trailing the father through the son, intending to bag both of them, as I have an interesting bit of what may prove strong evidence against Ralph Felton. But I can’t do anything with them at Jibana, and if Van Zandt runs afoul of young Felton to-day he is likely to kick over all my plans. Santiago is the place to play the last hand in this interesting game.”
“I get the idea,” remarks Ashley. “But what is this new evidence against young Fenton?”
“This: That I believe he is wearing about his neck at the present time the locket that was removed from Roger Hathaway’s watch-chain the night of the murder and bank robbery.”
Ashley whistles softly. “That’s interesting,” he says. “But how did you learn this? And while you are explaining kindly give an account of yourself from the time you jumped New York.”
The detective complies, and when the interesting tale is completed, Ashley says earnestly: “Barker, old chap, my confidence in you has been increased tenfold in the last month.”
“Thank you,” responds the detective, though he suspects some raillery in the newspaper man’s remark.
“Yes. There was a time when I doubted you a bit. And when you made arrangements to arrest Cyrus Felton I about concluded that the case was to prove after all an ordinary affair. But you have redeemed yourself, Barker. You have proved that the detective I have long admired in the pages of fiction is not a myth, but has his prototype in real life.”
“Indeed?” grunts Barker. “Go on.”
“Yes; just before you descended upon your victim with a triumphant swoop, said victim gave you the slip. Undaunted by such a trifling discouragement, you struck a bee line for Havana, and there—”
“Come, stow your chaff. I’d like to know whose tomfoolery prevented Felton’s arrest in New York. By thunder, if I could have got your ear a moment after I discovered Felton’s departure for Cuba, I’d have given you a dressing-down that would have knocked some of the self-sufficiency out of you.”