The Price

by Francis Lynde

In the moment of lost temper, when he had threatened angrily to play an indefinite waiting game, prolonging it until his man should walk into the trap, nothing had really been farther from his intentions. As a matter of fact, there were the best of business reasons why he should not waste another day in following, or attempting to follow, the cold trail. Other cases were pressing, and his daily mail from the New Orleans head-quarters brought urgings impatient and importunate; and on the third day following the sleeveless interview with the doctor's daughter he had paid his bill at the Winnebago House and had packed his grip for the southward flight by the afternoon train.

Twenty minutes before train-time a telegram from the New Orleans office had reopened the closed and crossed-off account of the Bayou State Security robbery. It was a bare line in answer to his own wire advising the office that he was about to return, but its significance was out of all proportion to its length. "B. S. S. man is in your town. Important letter to-day's mail," was all it said, but that was sufficient. Broffin had promptly told the clerk of the Winnebago that he had changed his mind, and forty-eight hours afterward he had the letter.

Like the telegram, the mail communication was significant but inconclusive. One Patrick Sheehan, a St. Louis cab driver, dying, had made confession to his priest. For a bribe of two hundred dollars he had aided and abetted the escape of a criminal on a day and date corresponding to the mid-April arrival of the steamer Belle Julie at St. Louis. Afterward he had driven the man to an up-town hotel (name not given) and had obtained from the clerk the man's name and destination. In his letter enclosing the confession the priest went on to say that the penitent had evidently had a severe struggle with his conscience. A mistaken sense of gratitude to the man who had bribed him had led him to tear off and destroy the upper half of the card given him by the up-town hotel clerk, and with the reminder gone he could not recall the man's name. But the destination address, "Wahaska, Minnesota," had been preserved, and the torn portion of the card bearing it was submitted with the confession.

With this new clue for an incentive, Broffin had immediately put his nose to the cold trail again. All other things apart, the torn card conclusively proved the correctness of the obstinately maintained hypothesis. If the robber had really chosen Wahaska for his hiding-place, he had done so merely because it was Miss Farnham's home. The boldness of the thing appealed instantly to a like quality in the detective, and he was not entirely unprepared for the eye-opening shock which came when he began to suspect that Griswold, the writing-man, was the man he was looking for.

The premonitory symptoms of the shock had manifested themselves when he began to note the regularity of Griswold's visits to the house in Lake Boulevard. Then came the pistol-buying episode, closely following an investment of money possible only to a capitalist—or a robber. Broffin worked quickly after this, tracing Griswold's record back to its Wahaskan beginnings and shadowing his man so faithfully that at any hour of the day or night he could have clapped the arresting hand upon his shoulder. Still he hesitated. Once, in his Secret Service days, he had arrested the wrong man, and the smart of the prosecution for false imprisonment would rankle as long as he lived.

This was why he took to the woods on the afternoon of the second day following Griswold's pistol purchase. He felt himself growing short-sighted from the very nearness of things. The single necessity now was for absolute and unshakable identification. To establish this, three witnesses, and three only, could be called upon. Of the three, two had failed signally—Miss Farnham because she had her own reasons for blocking the game, and President Galbraith.... That was another chapter in the book of failure. Broffin had learned that the president was stopping at the De Soto Inn, and he had manœuvred to bring Mr. Galbraith face to face with Griswold in the Grierson bank on the day after the pistol-buying. To his astonishment and disgust the president had shaken his head irritably, adding a rebuke. "Na, na, man; your trade makes ye over-suspeecious. That's Mr. Griswold, the writer-man and a friend of the Griersons. Miss Madgie was telling me about him last week. He's no more like the robber than you are. Haven't I told ye the man was bearded like a tyke?"

With two of the three eye-witnesses refusing to testify, there remained only Johnson, the paying teller of the Bayou State Security. Broffin was considering the advisability of wiring for Johnson when he passed the last of the houses on the lakeside drive and struck into the country road which led by cool and shaded forest windings to the resort hotel at the head of the southern bay. If Johnson should fail—and in view of the fact that President Galbraith had failed it was a possibility to be reckoned with—there remained only two doubtful expedients. With Patrick Sheehan's confession to point the way it might be possible to trace the transformed deck-hand from his final interview with McGrath on the Belle Juliestep by step to his appearance, sick and delirious, in Wahaska twenty-four hours later. This was one of the expedients. The other was to take the long chance by clapping the handcuffs upon Griswold in some moment of unpreparedness. It was a well-worn trick, and it did not always succeed in surprising the admission of guilt necessary to make it hold good. And if it should not hold good, there might be consequences. As we have noted, Broffin had once clapped the handcuffs on the wrong man.

Chewing an extinct cigar and ruminating thoughtfully over his problem, Broffin had followed the windings of the country road well into the lake-enclosing forest when he heard the rattle of wheels and the hoof-beats of a horse. Presently the vehicle overtook and passed him. It was Miss Grierson's trap, drawn by the big English trap-horse, with Miss Grierson herself holding the reins and Raymer lounging comfortably in the spare seat.

The sight of the pair moved Broffin to speech apostrophic—when the two were out of earshot. "You're the little lady I'd like to back into a corner," he muttered. "What you know about this business—and wouldn't tell, not if you was gettin' the third degree for it—would tie up all the broken strings in a hurry. How do I know you didn't help him to get out of St. Louis? How do I know that the whole blame sick play wasn't a plant from start to finish?" He stopped and struck viciously at a roadside weed with the switch he had cut. It was a new idea, an idea with promise; and when he went on, the reflective excursion had become a journey with a purpose. Chance had been good to him now and then in his hard-working career: perhaps it would be good to him again. Having let one woman put a stumbling-block in his way, perhaps it was going to even things up by making another woman remove it.

Half an hour later Broffin had followed the huge hoof-prints of the great English trap-horse to the driveway portal of the De Soto grounds where they were lost on the pebbled carriage approach. Strolling on through the grounds into the lake-fronting lobby of the Inn, he was soon able to account for Raymer. The young iron-founder was evidently on business bent. He was sitting in the lobby with a man whom Broffin recognized as the master car builder of the Pineboro Railroad, and the two were discussing mechanical details over a thick file of blue-prints spread out on Raymer's knees. The smile under Broffin's drooping mustaches was a grin of instant comprehension. Miss Grierson, driving Raymer's way, had picked up the iron-founder and brought him along to the business appointment. It was a way she had—when the candidate for the spare seat in the trap happened to be young and good-looking.