Some man had entered Hardy's room and tampered with Dorothy's cigars. This did not necessarily absolve Charles Scott, the insurance beneficiary, from suspicion, yet was all in his favor. The Hiram Cleave was an unknown quantity. Unfortunately the general description of the man who had entered Hardy's room tallied closely with Dorothy's description of Foster Durgin, whom she herself suspected of the crime. He had been in Hickwood, lurking near his uncle for several days. He had since run away and was apparently in hiding.
Intending to make an endeavor to seek out young Durgin and confront him with Barnes, who had seen the intruder in Hardy's room, and intending also to visit the dealer in tobacco from whom Dorothy had purchased her cigars, Garrison made his way to the railway station to return once more to New York.
The matter of finding Hardy's will was on his mind as a constant worry. It had not been found among his possessions or on his person. It could have been stolen from his room. If this should prove to be the case it would appear exceedingly unfavorable for Durgin. It was not at all unlikely that he might have been aware of something concerning the testament, while Hiram Cleave, if such a person existed, would have had no special interest in the document, one way or another.
Another possibility was that Hardy had hidden the will away, but this seemed rather unlikely.
Comfortably installed on a train at last, Garrison recalled his first deductions, made when he came upon the fact of the poisoned cigars. The person who had prepared the weeds must have known very many of Hardy's personal habits—that of taking the end cigar from a box, and of biting the point instead of cutting it off with his knife, for instance. These were things with which Foster, no doubt, would be well acquainted. And in photographic work he had handled the deadly poison employed for Hardy's death.
Again, as he had a hundred times before, Garrison accused himself of crass stupidity in permitting someone to abstract that cigar from his pocket. It might have been lost: this he knew, but he felt convinced it had been stolen. And since he was certain that Dorothy was not the one, he could think of no chance that a thief could have had to extract it without attracting his attention.
When at length he arrived once more in Manhattan, he proceeded at once to the shop on Amsterdam Avenue where Dorothy had purchased her cigars. Here he found a short individual in charge of a general business, including stationery, candy, newspapers, and toys, in addition to the articles for smokers.
Garrison pulled out his memorandum concerning that box of cigars still in possession of Pike, at Branchville.
"I dropped in to see if by any chance you recall the sale of a box of cigars some little time ago," he said, and he read off the name of the brand. "You sold them to a lady—a young lady. Perhaps you remember."
"Oh, yes," agreed the man. "I don't sell many by the box."