Under Three Flags: A Story of Mystery

by Bert Leston Taylor; Alvin T. Thoits

“True. But to continue. This forenoon I visited the station at Ashfield, where Ames and the girl—there can be no question that they were the pair—boarded the night express south. While I was lounging about the station, waiting for the train back to Raymond, my eye caught the glitter of an object lying between the inside rail of the track and the south end of the platform, and partly under the latter. It was a revolver, 32 caliber, and one chamber was empty. With that for a basis, I questioned the station agent on another tack, and he finally succeeded in remembering that just as the train pulled into the station that memorable night the girl handed Ames his coat, and as he threw it over his arm an object dropped from one of the pockets, which Ames quickly recovered and replaced in the coat as he and his companion clambered aboard the train. Might not this revolver have been the object dropped by Ames, and might he not when he put it back in his coat have slipped it into the sleeve, through which it dropped as he stepped upon the train?”

“Well, the theory is ingenious, even if wrong,” muses Ashley.

“I clinched it a bit more,” continues Barker. “Where had Ames and the girl boarded the train? The station agent remembered that it was at the south end of the platform, as the New York sleeper was made up next behind the engine and baggage car.”

“I beg to remark,” puts in Ashley, “that the fact of one chamber in a revolver being empty is not at all unusual. I have in my pocket a gun in that condition, but as it is a 38 caliber, that lets me out of any connection with the tragedy.”

“Of course,” smiles Barker, “I take all these bits of evidence for what they are worth. While waiting for my train I argued in this wise: Derrick Ames was in love with Helen Hathaway, and the attachment resulted in an elopement. Neither was seen after 2 o’clock of Memorial Day, and the inference is that they were together somewhere all the afternoon and evening. The elopement was apparently unpremeditated, as they took nothing with them, so far as known, except the clothes they wore. There must have been some cause for such an impromptu exit. People do not elope that way no matter how love-mad they may be. Where was Helen when Ames was seen going into the bank? Waiting for him somewhere. What was his errand? To make a final appeal for the girl’s hand, with an elopement in mind as the last resort, perhaps. But even failing in that, why elope that particular night? There must have been a cause for hurrying him away. But if you assume that Ames committed the crime, even as the upshot of a fierce quarrel, even perhaps in self-defense, you must figure him a moral monstrosity, for only such could strike down a father and elope subsequently with the daughter. And then there is the missing money. You see it argues a villainy more despicable than a man like Ames could have been guilty of.”

“Yet pathology records even more singular instances of moral distortion.”

“Even so. But is it not more reasonable to believe that Ames may have been only a witness to the murder, or a spectator on the scene of the tragedy after it had occurred, and that he was hurried away by the horror of the affair? But in either event would he not have argued that to fly would be the worst possible thing he could do? I confess that when I arrived at Raymond I was in doubt as to Ames’ possible guilt, but my afternoon’s investigations have about convinced me that Derrick Ames had nothing to do with the death of Cashier Hathaway.”

“Then you must have substituted some other person as the object of your suspicion.”

“Yes; but the substitution is not especially recent. Before I give you the result of my afternoon labors let me tell you of a discovery that I made yesterday, not three hours after my arrival in town.

“After I had posted myself from the stenographic notes of the inquest I dropped into the bank to have a talk with the officials. President Felton took me into the directors’ room, where the tragedy occurred, and I sat in the cashier’s chair and glanced around to get a few bearings. While Felton was retelling his story of the finding of Hathaway’s body I toyed with a blotter on the desk. It was the ordinary blotter, larger than the average, with the advertisement of an insurance company on one side. As I glanced carelessly at it I noticed that it had taken up the ink of some unusually plain characters.