The detective laughed and said:
"When I need aid I will secure a woman."
Here was as pretty a double answer as was ever uttered, but the man from Newark only got on to one end of it. After a little time Jack let down easy on the man, thinking he might be of some service some day, and later the visitor departed, carrying his mortification and defeat in his memory. But he had learned a lesson, we hope, in the difficult trade he pretended to follow.
On the day following the incidents we have recorded Jack started out to walk to the adjoining town. On the way he came to an old graveyard; he stopped a moment and then said, talking to himself:
"Great Scott! I have missed a point all along. I will just take a walk around this old burying ground. I have not been able to learn anything from the living, I may pick up a point from a tombstone."
It was a bright, clear day; the sun shone with magnificent splendor as the shrewd officer entered the burying ground. He walked around looking for little graves, and he had been fully an hour in the place when suddenly he uttered a cry. He beheld letters almost illegible which struck him as startling in view of his quest. He dropped down, brushed away the grass, and lo, his search was ended—indeed his eyes had not deceived him. There before his eyes was the humble epitaph: "Amalie Canfield, aged four years; died December 20, 18—."
The detective's search was over and he was sadly disappointed, although the disappointment meant a large fortune to himself, under the declaration of Mr. Townsend. There was no need for the detective to search further. He had solved the mystery, he had found Amalie Stevens, and she left no heirs. The child had died, according to the tombstone, some two months following the death of her adopted grandfather. There was the indisputable testimony.
On the day following Jack appeared in New York and at the home of Mr. Townsend, and he said:
"Well, sir, the mystery is all solved."
"It is?"