CHAPTER XVIII.
BARKER DECIDES TO STRIKE.
“Well, my boy,” begins Barker, “it’s a long lane that has no turn, and I think we have reached the beginning of the end of this Hathaway mystery. There is the weapon that sent Roger Hathaway to eternity Memorial Day of last year,” handing it to Ashley, with a complacent air. “I am not a betting man, or I would wager a reasonable sum that, ere the anniversary of the crime rolls around, the murderer will be safely incarcerated in the Mansfield County jail in Vermont.”
Ashley examines curiously the weapon Barker has produced. It is an ordinary 32-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver, of the bull-dog variety, covered with rust, and all of the five chambers, with possibly one exception, contain unused cartridges.
“Yes, there is one empty chamber,” responds Barker, as Ashley attempts ineffectually to turn the rusty cylinder, “and that sent poor old Hathaway out of the world. And now I will tell you of some important clews that I have succeeded in running down since I saw you last.
“You know I subscribed for the Raymond local newspaper, and a mighty good investment that $1.25 proved. Week before last the paper contained a local item about a boy’s finding a revolver on the bank of Wild River. It was only a ten-to-one shot that the revolver picked up by the river bank was Hathaway’s missing gun, but I took the short end and posted off to Raymond. The result of my trip you now hold in your hand.
“The little chap who found the revolver had picked it up close to the opposite bank from which it had been thrown. It was quite a stretch beyond the deep pool that we explored. You see I was fully a hundred yards from Felton when he hurled the revolver into the stream, and I miscalculated the force he put into the throw. His feeling of loathing for the hateful weapon was such that he hurled it nearly across the river. Even then, it would have been covered by two or three feet of water had not the river been dammed last fall, a few rods above the place, to furnish power for a sawmill. That left only an inch or two of water over the revolver, and little Jimmy Jones, or whatever his name was, found it there while prowling about the river bank. It is Roger Hathaway’s revolver, too, beyond a doubt. I had Sibley, who was teller of the bank, and who has seen it in Hathaway’s desk a thousand times, examine it, and he positively identifies it.
“So far, so good. That revolver rivets a mighty strong link, I take it, to the chain we have already forged about Cyrus Felton. But the situation had become somewhat complicated, I found after I secured possession of the revolver. Felton has skipped from Raymond, taking the Hathaway girl with him, and evidently does not intend to return for some time, if indeed at all. Consequently our next and most imperative duty is to find where he now is and see that he does not get beyond our reach.”
“I can do that in five minutes,” Ashley quietly assures the detective. “Cyrus Felton and Miss Louise Hathaway are now at the St. James hotel in this city. They sail for Cuba next Saturday.”
“Good,” remarks the phlegmatic Barker. “That is luck on a par with finding the revolver. But when Cyrus Felton leaves New York it will be to go back to Vermont. Bound for Cuba, eh? Why did he select that country instead of Europe, I wonder?”