“Nope. What you t’ink I want wid a comb, hey?”
“Were they Sherwood’s?”
“Nope. Never see t’ings like dat on Sherwood. See ’em on dat stranger I tell you about.”
“I thought so!” cried Ben. “I thought so! We’ve got him on toast! And Sherwood’s clear!”
He took up the comb.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing at gilt lettering stamped into the soft leather of the case. “Read it, Uncle Jim. ‘Bonnard Frères, Quebec, P. Q.’ How’s that for a morning’s work on an empty stomach?”
Uncle Jim was bewildered.
“The stranger came from Quebec,” he said. “Sure, I get that. Noel saw these things on him, and now you’ve found them somewheres. It proves he was here; but Noel told us that yesterday. I can’t see how it proves he shot any one—Balenger nor any one else. If you’d found his rifle, now that would be something. But a fountain pen?”
“You meet him dis mornin’, hey, an’ rob ’im, hey?” queried Noel.
“Nothing like it!” exclaimed Ben. “I found these things in the moss at the top of the bank on the other side of the river. That’s the very spot where he lay when he fired at Balenger. He broke the snap—the clasp there—when he was wriggling about for a clear shot through the brush, I guess, and the pen and the comb fell out of his pocket. He was in such a hurry to get away after he’d fired, when he saw he’d hit, that he didn’t notice the pen and comb. They were pressed into the moss. I know that’s what happened; and we know he came from Quebec; and Noel knows what he looks like. That’s enough, I guess—enough to save Sherwood, anyhow.”