CHAPTER XI.
A SIFTING OF EVIDENCE.
Both men smoke on in a brief silence that Ashley breaks with an inquiring “Well?”
“Much,” is Barker’s smiling response. “Now, my boy,” he adds briskly, as he extracts a bunch of writing paper from his grip and sharpens his pencil, “tell me everything you know concerning the dramatis personae in this drama. We will get our facts together, and then I’ll give you my theories—for I have more than one. Go ahead.”
When Ashley has exhausted his stock of information and has hazarded one or two ingenious theories, the detective leans back in his chair and for the space of five minutes says not a word. Finally he turns to Ashley.
“This Hathaway mystery,” he begins, “is either simplicity itself or it is shrouded in a veil that only the patient search and unceasing effort of months will lift. My first glance at the case led me to believe that the murder was the work of a professional, so swiftly had it been accomplished and so completely had the work of the operator been covered up. But the most earnest search has failed to discover the presence in town on Memorial Day of any person who could possibly be regarded as a suspicious character, except Ernest Stanley, of whom more anon.
“Then the deed must have been committed by some one in Raymond. Thus far we have evidence affecting four men—Derrick Ames, Cyrus Felton, Ralph Felton, and Ernest Stanley. If two of the four were implicated it could have been only the Feltons, father and son. I do not say that any of the four is the guilty man. But a chain of evidence must be forged about the slayer of Roger Hathaway, and in order that this chain shall be complete, minus not a single link, it becomes necessary for us to establish the innocence of these four men, if they are innocent, as well as the presumptive guilt of a fifth party, if a fifth party committed the crime.”
“In other words, we are hampered by a superabundance of clews.”
“Exactly. I will pardon your interruption, but no more of them, unless they are good ones. Now, your attention.
“Roger Hathaway was killed in his office in the bank on the evening of Memorial Day, some time between 7:45 and 8:30 o’clock. No definite minute or five minutes can be fixed. Two of our characters were, we know, and the other two may have been, at the bank between 7:45 and 8:30. To begin with Ames. Sam Brockway tells me that he saw Ames enter the bank after Hathaway had handed a note to the boy, Jimmie Howe. Brockway did not stay to see Ames come out; when the latter did emerge he was unseen. It is not unreasonable to assume that Ames killed Hathaway as the climax of a bitter quarrel over the latter’s daughter, and that, to facilitate his escape, he helped himself to the bank’s funds. But it is unreasonable to assume that subsequently he induced the daughter to elope with him. That is the weak link in that chain.”