“Here’s a young man, Burton,” said the banker, smiling, “who, I take it, has some inclinations for your line of work. In fact, here is pretty convincing proof of it.” And the banker pointed to the box of jewels.
Mr. Miles Burton looked nonplussed. He stared at the box in amazement for a minute, and gave a low whistle. Then he laughed and said: “I have always maintained that luck is a great factor in detective service, though I am ready to give a man his due for a good piece of work. In either case, you have my congratulations, young man, for a half a thousand dollars is just as good whether it comes by luck or shrewdness, or both.”
The detective listened with the keenest attention as Henry Burns repeated the story he had told the banker. He made him give the minutest details of Mr. Kemble’s personality, at the same time suggesting features which Henry Burns corroborated.
“It’s just as I thought from the start, and just as I told you, Mr. Curtis,” he said. “The man is undoubtedly George Craigie, who is known among his class as the ‘Actor,’ because of his cleverness in impersonating one character, and then utterly dropping out of sight and appearing as some other person. We want him on a score of charges, two bank robberies, attempted murder, several house burglaries, and other things. His picture is in the Rogues’ Gallery, but he has the art of changing his expression and appearance so completely that, although I have seen him twice since that was taken, at neither of those times did his countenance resemble his photograph. However, I feel positive from what this young man tells me that it is none other than he. And as for his confederates, I can readily guess who they are. They are two Boston men, and are, no doubt, on their way to the island now in the yacht. In this case, we cannot act any too soon; and I shall ask Detective Burns, who is familiar with the ground, to be my right-hand man in the expedition.”
“You can count on me,” replied Henry Burns, with a smile at the title conferred upon him, and who was, truth to tell, vastly flattered. “I can answer, moreover, for several good assistants, if you need them.”
“Well,” said Mr. Miles Burton, rising to go, “I will meet you at the train that leaves here to-morrow afternoon. By to-morrow night I hope to have some men on Grand Island who will give a pleasant little surprise to Messrs. Craigie & Co.;” and, bowing courteously, he took his leave.
“There’s a surprising lack of jealousy in that man Burton,” remarked the banker, when he had gone. “He is disappointed to have the robbers slip through his hands, and a little chagrined, I know, to have them caught through the aid of a party of boys; but he took pains not to show it, and, what’s more, he will always give you the credit for it when he speaks of it. That’s the kind of a man he is. He is as smart as a steel trap, too, is Burton, and has done me good service twice before.
“But let us not wait longer. I am going to take you home with me to dinner, and have you spend the night at my house. We shall feel more secure, I assure you,” he continued, smiling, “with a detective under our roof.”
Henry Burns declined, saying he was not dressed for such hospitality, but the keen eye of the banker had long before taken note of his neat and gentlemanly appearance, and, moreover, liked the looks of the boy’s clear-cut features, and the way he had of looking one fair in the eye, with a calm but manly and courageous glance. So he waived the boy’s objections, and they entered the banker’s carriage and were driven to the finest home Henry Burns had ever visited.
Perhaps they didn’t make him at home there when Mr. Curtis had told the story of the finding of the jewels hidden in the cellar; and perhaps Henry Burns, to his confusion, wasn’t embraced by the banker’s wife, and perhaps he wasn’t made a hero of by the banker’s two pretty daughters, who shuddered at the story of the man in the cellar, and who made Henry Burns tell it over and over again.