Hunter looked as if the question tired him. He was a tall dark man, with an unusually expressive face, and was not accustomed to concealing his feelings.
“That’s more of your horse-play. Whether the paper’s genuine or not can’t have any bearing on the murder. It isn’t to be imagined, if it’s a forgery, that there was a purpose to make it public after the principals in the affair were dead. It’s a false scent and meant to be a false scent.”
On the very evening on which Charles Hunter urged the employment of an additional detective, Trafford was handed a telegram telling him that Charles Matthewson had left Augusta on the late afternoon train up the river. It had been an easy matter to ascertain that he had not left the train either at the main station in Millbank or at the Bridge-stop, but none the less the detective had an uneasy feeling that the man might be in town. If so, whom did he come to see and why did he come and go so mysteriously? He could see no possible connection between the relationship of Wing with Matthewson and the murder, and yet he could not divest his mind of the impression that there was some mystery going on before his very eyes which he had not fathomed, but which, if fathomed, would bear upon the discovery of the murderer.
A half-hour or so before the down train was due to leave the Millbank station, he left the hotel and walked down Canaan Street to its junction with Somerset Street and the covered and enclosed bridge that spans the river at that point. Here, upon the very brink of the river, fifty feet above the water, stood the small brick building of the Millbank National Bank. The bridge and the bank lay in shadow, for it was a moonless night and the street lamp at the entrance of the bridge was not lighted. Above the bridge was the dash and roar of the falls; below, the steady murmur of the narrowed current, between its rocky walls that rise more than fifty feet from the water’s edge.
“Thunder!” he thought, “there are some creepy places around this town, especially when they can’t sponge on the moon for light. If I was an inspired detective, I’d know whether there was any danger in that bridge. As I ain’t, I guess I’ll take the centre.”
He advanced into the darkness of the drive, which was pitchy black, solid plank walls dividing it from the footwalk on either hand. He was half-way through, when he suddenly felt the presence of some one near him, though he could see or hear nothing. He stopped, and absolute stillness reigned, save the tumult of the water above and below. He had walked close to the wall on the down-river side, so that his form might not be outlined against the opening of the bridge, and he was conscious that he was as completely concealed, since he had advanced a rod into the darkness, as were his companions. It was a question of endurance, and in that his training gave him the advantage.
Softly there came out of the darkness a noise as of the moving of a tired leg. Inch by inch Trafford crept close to the board wall, until now it was at his back, with one of the heavy timbers protecting his left arm. His right was free for defence. The sound indicated a man within a few feet of him on his left.
Suddenly there was the sharp swish of a club in the air, and the thud of contact with a living body, followed by a loud cry of pain and
“Sacré; c’est moi, Pierre!”
“Mon dieu! Où est le chien?”