“It wouldn’t surprise you much to learn anything, Ben,” he said. “Have you got him tied under yer chair? Introduce me, will you?”
Ben laughed good-naturedly, produced the pen, the comb and the broken clip and told all that he knew about them, including old Noel’s searching description of the stranger’s appearance.
“Ben, I hand it to you,” said the deputy sheriff. “I give you best—for the second time. Yer smart and yer steady—and yer lucky! What’s yer next move?”
“What would you suggest, Mr. Brown?”
“Me suggest? That’s polite of you, Ben, but I’d sooner listen to you. I got a high opinion of the way you work yer brains—and yer luck, if you don’t object to me mentionin’ yer luck.”
“I was thinking that you might make a special constable of me or if I’m too young for that you might engage me as a private detective, and we’ll go to Quebec and find out what the chief of police there knows about an acquaintance of Louis Balenger’s with three gold teeth and a scar just below his right ear.”
“Exactly what I was goin’ to suggest!” exclaimed Mr. Brown. “Shake on it! I’ll fix it—an’ the sooner the quicker. What about the day after to-morrow? If you get here as early as you did to-day we can take the two-o’clock train.”
Ben spent hours of the next day searching in the upland woods and the island thickets for Richard Sherwood. The incident of the trap had increased his pity for and his sense of responsibility toward the broken fugitive. Again his efforts were unsuccessful. He found nothing—no ashes of a screened fire, no makeshift shelter, no furtive shape vanishing in the underbrush. He left a message in the woods and down among the willows, repeated on half a dozen of pages torn from his notebook and impaled on twigs. Here is the message:
You are safe and we are your friends. The trap was a mistake. Please come to the house.
Ben O’Dell.