The train connection for Rockdale was wretchedly timed. What with a long wait at the junction and a long delay at a way station farther out, it was nearly one o'clock when at length his destination was reached and Garrison, with his steel-trap suit-case in hand, found his way to a second-rate hotel, where, to his great relief, the beds were far better than they looked.
He had taken the precaution to register as Henry Hilborn, realizing that Rockdale doubtless abounded in acquaintances of Hardy's who would probably read the published story of his will in their own local papers in the morning. He wrote at once to Dorothy, under the name of Miss Root, apprising her of his altered name and his address.
In the morning he was early at his work. Representing himself as nothing more than the agent of the New York Insurance Company, for which he was, in fact, conducting his various investigations, at least in part, he rapidly searched out one after another of the persons whose names Dorothy had supplied, but all to little purpose.
He found the town very much alive indeed to the news which the Star had blazoned to the world. Hardy had been a well-known figure, off and on, for many years in Rockdale, and the names of the Durgins and of Dorothy were barely less familiar.
Garrison's difficulty was not that the people talked too little, but rather that they talked too much, and said almost nothing in the process. New trivialities were exceedingly abundant.
He worked all day with no results of consequence. The persons whose names had been supplied by Dorothy had, in turn, furnished more names by the dozen, alleging that this man or that knew John Hardy better than the proverbial brother, if possible; nevertheless, one after another, they revealed their ignorance of any vital facts that Garrison could use.
On the following day he learned that Paul Durgin, the nephew credited with having claimed the body of the murdered man, lived ten miles out on a farm, amassing a fortune rearing ducks.
Hiring a team, Garrison drove to Durgin's farm. He found his man in the center of a vast expanse of duck-pens, where ducks by the thousand, all singularly white and waterless, were greeting their master with acclaim.
Durgin came out of the duck midst to see his visitor. He was a large, taciturn being, healthy, strong, independent, a trifle suspicious and more than a trifle indifferent as to the final disposal of John Hardy's fortune.
Garrison, at first, found him hard to handle. He had not yet read the papers. He knew nothing at all of what was being said; and now that he heard it at last, from Garrison's lips, he scarcely did more than nod his head.