“Now, listen. Here’s a proposition for you: If Stanley was not concerned in the bank affair, what was he doing at 6 o’clock next morning asleep in the bushes in a lonely gorge near South Ashfield village?”
“The devil!”
“With a package of papers clutched fast in his hands, about the size that a bundle of treasury notes and securities would make.”
“You know he was there?”
“I met him.”
Barker is thoughtful. “You said nothing to the authorities or in your dispatches about the incident?”
“No. I didn’t consider it worth while. The authorities were already scouring the country round about, and I did not exploit it in my dispatches because I concluded to save it for a longer and better story when we run down the criminal—beg pardon, when the criminal is run down. But,” continues Ashley, as Barker remains silent, “that is the clew to which I attach the less importance.
“I had heard from some source that Ralph Felton had been seen at this hotel a good share of Memorial Day, and I started in on a pumping expedition, beginning with John Thayer, the clerk. Thayer was noticeably uncommunicative; I thought I’d bluff him a bit, so I remarked: ‘Well, you’ve concluded to tell me what you know, eh?’ The bluff appeared to work, for he flushed a little and replied: ‘I’ll tell you all about it if you will agree to keep it out of the paper.’ As I had suspended all dispatches to the Hemisphere pending the discovery of a story worth filing, I readily enough agreed to refrain from publishing his secret to the world. Then he extracted a promise that I should not divulge a word to any one in the village.
“‘Ralph Felton is as innocent of that crime as you or I,’ asserted Thayer when all the conditions for secrecy had been satisfactorily arranged.
“‘That is possible, but why did he refuse to answer the coroner and why did he cut the town?’ said I.