How coolly she waived the ceremony of apology! She wanted the letter—she took it; a mere matter of course.
And as a matter of course, she returned it.
Thus much of the letter was straight-forward, and suited me well enough; but——
"I thought it might help me to a clue, but was wrong. I can not use it."
Over these words I pondered, and then I connected them with the remainder of the letter. Mrs. Ballou was clever, but she was no diplomatist. She had put a thread in my hands.
I made some marks in a little memorandum book, that would have been called anything but intelligible to the average mortal, but that were very plain language to my eye, and to none other. Next I put a certain bit of information in the hands of my Chief; then I turned my face toward Trafton.
To my readers the connection between the fate of the two missing girls, and the mysterious doings at Trafton, may seem slight.
To my mind, as we set out that day for the scene of a new operation, there seemed nothing to connect the two; I was simply, as I thought, for the time being, laying down one thread to take up another.
A detective has not the gift of second sight, and without this gift how was I to know that at Trafton I was to find my clue to the Groveland mystery, and that that mystery was in its turn to shed a light upon the dark doings of Trafton, and aid justice in her work of requital?