Cyrus Felton.”
Barker mechanically unfolds the inclosure, three sheets of letter paper crumpled and worn. The stillness within the cabin is deathlike as the detective reads:
“Before your eyes rest upon these lines the hand that pens them will be cold in death. I have taken the only alternative. For myself I care not, but that the finger of scorn should be pointed at my defenseless children; that their young lives should be blighted and they shunned and avoided as lepers because their father betrayed his trust and cruelly wronged his friends and neighbors, I cannot bear it. The banks, both of them, are irretrievably involved. The funds deposited by the county to pay the bonds have been used to meet pressing obligations. The crash would come to-morrow. It cannot be staved off another day. I have thought it all out. For the sake of my children and the name they bear I am about to take my own life. But they nor any other living person save you must ever know that I did not die by the hand of the assassin. I have arranged that it will appear as if the bank has been robbed and the cashier murdered. As I write this room bears evidence of a fearful struggle. The vault is open and the securities in confusion. Thus will our crime be hidden from the eyes of all save God. Your personal account overdrawn I have fixed by the removal of pages from the ledger, so that when the examination of the bank’s affairs is made there may be no suspicion of irregularity on your part or mine. You will be the first to find my lifeless body. The weapon by which I die you must secure and secrete.
“And now, farewell. That the sacrifice I am about to make may not be in vain I adjure you guard well the secret of my death. Care for my children. Watch over them, cherish them. By our hope of heaven and forgiveness, by our life-long friendship, by the bitter sacrifice to which duty points the way, by all these things I charge you, Cyrus Felton, fail not at the peril of your good name.
Roger Hathaway.”
As Barker concludes the reading of the remarkable epistle each of the four men is busy with his thoughts. No one offers any comment on the message from the dead. Finally Ames breaks the silence.
“And Ralph Felton?” he queries, turning to Barker.
“He had nothing whatever to do with the death of Roger Hathaway,” returns the detective. “He refused to answer the coroner’s question at the inquest as to where he had spent his time between 7:45 o’clock and 8:30 on the evening of Memorial Day because he did not wish his association with Isabel Winthrop, or Harding, to become known when he had been a suitor for the hand of Helen Hathaway. But that was not his principal reason for leaving Raymond as suddenly as he did. As bookkeeper of the savings bank he had embezzled a portion of the funds—not a sensational peculation, only sufficient to keep pace with his expenditures, which were in excess of his income. Fearing that his offense would be made public when the bank’s affairs were overhauled, he fled. It was with difficulty that I extracted from him yesterday afternoon a confession of his reason for leaving Raymond.
“As to the locket supposed to have been removed from Hathaway’s watch chain the night of the tragedy, and which Mr. Ashley picked up a few nights ago, I supposed until yesterday that it had been dropped by Ralph Felton. But it seems that it was torn from Mr. Ames’ neck when Felton hurled himself upon him on that memorable evening at Jibana. Mr. Hathaway had detached it from his chain the morning of Memorial Day, as the spring was broken, and had given it to Helen to convey to the jeweler’s to be repaired. It left Raymond with her, and when she and her husband took up their Cuban life the miniature of the younger sister was removed, for obvious reasons, and Mr. Ames wore the locket about his neck, attached to a long gold chain.”
Another silence, which this time Van Zandt breaks.