"A large hound; sir. Why, to be sure, I told you!—Lord! he's gone!"
Here at last was a clew! It proved effectual. The agent at the Pennsylvania Railroad office remembered distinctly the young girl who wished to take her dog with her down to some station on the coast, and the difficulty which the train-master meant to make about it. "But she took him," he added. "She was a very beautiful woman. Nobody cared to refuse her."
Van Ness went down to the Branch, to Beach Haven, Manasquan, all the fishing-villages along the coast, among the rest to Sutphen's Point. He talked to old Sutphen himself, his foot resting on a barnacle-eaten log where Jane herself had sat the day before. But the old man was loyal. He was stupid, stared vacantly at Van Ness, had seen no young woman and no dog: there had never been any such at the Point. Van Ness went hurriedly on to the next station, spent a couple of days in the search, and returned to Philadelphia.
"So the young lady came back before you?" said the agent, nodding familiarly as he passed the ticket-window.
"Yes. You saw her?"
"Oh, she bought her ticket of me. Yesterday, you know."
"For what point?" Van Ness's voice was so hoarse that the man heard him with difficulty.
"Richmond. Took the dog, too."
"Give me a ticket for Richmond, please. When does the next train go?"
"In half an hour. She has twenty-four hours the start of you, sir," with a significant laugh as he handed out the ticket and change.