The District Attorney worked hard to get his further proof. But though his sleuths searched the woods for clues, none were found. They had the bare fact that the dying man had denounced his slayer, but no corroboration of the murderer’s identity, and the neighborhood of the crime was scoured for other witnesses without success.
The district attorney had never really thought the Swede committed the murder. A grilling third degree had failed to bring confession and daily developments of Sandstrom’s behavior made it seem more and more improbable that he was the criminal.
And so Whiting had come to suspect Kane Landon, and had kept him under careful watch of detectives ever since the murder, in hope of finding some further and more definite evidence against him.
But there were no results and at last the district attorney began to despair of unraveling the mystery.
And then Groot made a discovery.
“That Stryker,” he said, bursting in upon Whiting in great excitement, “that butler,—he’s your man! I thought so all along!”
“Why didn’t you say so?” asked the other.
“Never mind chaffing, you listen. That Stryker, he’s been taking out a big insurance. A paid-up policy, of,—I don’t remember how much. But he had to plank down between eight and nine hundred dollars cash to get it. And he used his bequest from old Trowbridge to do it!”
“Well?”
“Well, here’s the point. You know how those premiums work. After Stryker is sixty years and six months old, he can’t get insured at all,—in that company any way, and at those rates.”