“Can’t the river be dredged?”
“Yes; with a force of men and a steam dredger, and the whole township looking on and asking questions. We can do nothing this morning. Up anchor and away! I could use a little breakfast.”
“By the way,” observes Ashley, as the two men walk back to the hotel, “in all your talk last night you said nothing of that locket, with the miniatures of the Hathaway sisters, which was stolen from the watch-chain of the murdered cashier the night of the killing.”
“Do you know it was stolen on that night?” asks the detective.
“We must assume that it was until we know otherwise, I suppose,” returns Ashley. “If the missing locket is found in the possession of any one of our suspects it would be a strong link, would it not?”
“Very likely, but we must find our man first. Shall you be ready to leave for New York to-night?”
“Sure thing.”
“Good. We must strike the trail there and follow it, if need be, to the end of the world.”
Ashley has been in Raymond only two weeks, but already he begins to sigh for the pleasures and palaces of gay, crowded and babel-voiced New York.
“Hang it!” he growls to Barker, as he packs his valise, “this Vermont country is all right, but the natives are atrocious. They know no literature except those provincial Boston dailies and the current paper-covered rot; no music except Sousa’s marches, no art except the colored supplements to the Sunday newspapers and no conversation higher than horse, hay and village gossip.”