“And try your best to do all that I have asked?”
“Yes.”
“And make reports to me, as I have outlined?”
“Yes.”
“Then good-by. I shall be in Virginia in the morning.”
Nevertheless, it was the following evening, at dark, when Nick Carter arrived in the little village where the supposed Ledger Dinwiddie had been received with such acclaim upon his return to “his own,” and with a wife.
The detective knew that Jimmy was still in New York, and that was one reason why he hastened his movements. He wished to be there on the ground, at Kingsgift, before the supposed heir to it returned.
I wonder if any of the readers realize how entirely remote from the news of the day some portions of the State of Virginia are, right now?
It is a fact that of two letters deposited in a mail box in the City of New York, at the same time, one addressed to Denver, Colorado, and the other to Hague, Virginia, the former will arrive first at its destination—for the Hague is sixty miles from the nearest railway station, and the river boats do not carry the mails. And this fact will suffice to explain how it was that nothing was known in that locality of the strange doings of Ledger Dinwiddie, in New York.
But Nick drove a span of horses from Fredericksburg, sixty miles away; he arrived at Hague at dark; he drove on straight through the one street of the village, and out toward Kingsgift, which is eight miles farther.