“Because his son is in Cuba. Barker, I opine that it will be necessary for both of us to revise our theories of the murder,” continues Ashley. “In the judgment of the undersigned, both Feltons, father and son, are equally implicated in that crime. As to which actually fired the fatal shot, I am not prepared to say. But I am confident that both were in the bank when Hathaway was shot. I learned to-day that there is a young American, a planter, in Cuba who has joined the Spanish army as an officer on the staff of the captain-general. His name is, or was, Felton. Now comes the senior Felton, en route to Cuba. Why should he go to Cuba just at this time while the island is in the throes of insurrection? He tells Miss Hathaway that he has business interests there—a sugar plantation. Isn’t it clear that he is going to join his son?”
Barker taps his forehead reflectively. “The idea is plausible,” he admits. “But what in the name of the great hornspoon is he taking Miss Hathaway there for? It isn’t possible that he is so cold-blooded, so absolutely devoid of conscience, that he would wed the daughter of the man he had slain?”
“Decidedly not,” returns Ashley, with very like a snort of disgust at the suggestion of the possibility of Louise Hathaway becoming Cyrus Felton’s wife. “Miss Hathaway is Felton’s ward, and of course he is obliged to take her with him. Besides she herself is anxious to go to Cuba. She told me so this afternoon.”
“Anxious to go herself, eh?” repeats Barker. “Well, there is no accounting for tastes. I think if I were going on a pleasure trip, however, I should select some other spot than that home of Yellow Jack and the machete. But”—the detective’s forehead is wrinkled in thought—“you don’t suppose she has any friends in Cuba whom she is anxious to see—her sister or Derrick Ames?”
Ashley considers this possibility a moment. “It is possible,” he exclaims. “She admitted she had received letters from her sister, who was well and happy—but not in this country, she said at first, and then changed it to ‘not in this section of the country.’ Ames and her sister may be in Cuba, as well as Ralph Felton; but not, I will wager a good deal, in the same vicinity—not, at least, if Ames knows it. Barker, it seems to me that instead of this matter becoming simplified it is daily growing more complicated. The thing for us to do is to cut the Gordian knot at once and bring matters to a climax.”
“There is only one way to do it.”
“Exactly. Arrest Cyrus Felton, and charge him with being the murderer of Roger Hathaway, or an accomplice before or after the act.”
Barker picks up the revolver again.
“We have got a good deal of strong evidence against him,” he says, slowly; “yet I should like to get the son in the same net. With the two of them jointly accused and jointly tried I am certain we could unravel the mystery. I have evidence against the elder Felton that I have not yet told you; in fact, what I consider as a sufficient motive for the crime. The absence of a good, healthy motive, you know, was the weak link in our chain.
“The president of those two banks, I am convinced, was short in his accounts with both institutions. In other words, he had used the bank’s securities to tide over his own financial affairs, which I have discovered, were not in the flourishing condition supposed. Although he was aware that Felton’s accounts were overdrawn, as was evidenced by the writing on the blotter, Hathaway was apparently ignorant of the fact that the president had taken many of the bank’s securities and hypothecated them for his own account. That was done by the president through the connivance of his son, the bookkeeper. Get the idea?”