“Two State police, Garnett and Byers, rode toward Fairfield not fifteen minutes ago. We can catch them and there is a cross-road. Why, Miss Scott, don’t cry now!”
Elizabeth looked at him tearfully. The great car was turning; she felt like a child who had been lost and who sees at last some hope of rescue.
Within five minutes they had caught up with the two horsemen who left their mounts at a farmhouse and got into the machine. The driver bent a little over his wheel and again they were off. Before they started to climb the last hill, Colonel Thomas leaning forward shouted to the driver to stop.
“We’d better make our plans,” said he nervously. His eyes sparkled; one could imagine how he had looked before going into a charge. He had had, alas, a letter from the editor of General Adams’s “Recollections,” who had explained that the letter from which Colonel Thomas’s quotation was taken had been partially destroyed and that the row of asterisks indicated a missing sheet. He wished that he had not mentioned his inquiry to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth recounted hurriedly the history of the last few days.
“After you went away, I went down the road on an errand, and when I came back Herbert was gone, and there was a notice saying that I could have him in exchange for the paper.”
“What paper?” asked Colonel Thomas.
“Some time ago I walked up into the woods and heard an old woman crying because her son was going to take her money to buy a gun and there wouldn’t be anything to bury her. Forty dollars was all she had. So I wrote a will, but I left it in the cabin, and she won’t give it to them. I think they’re afraid that she told other things.”
“What other things?” asked one of the police.