“Of course.”
“Did they,” the doctor asked mildly, “find three hundred dollars in his pocket?”
“Three hundred dollars to the penny in one roll.” The captain fanned his face with his uniform cap. Abruptly the motion of the cap stopped. “Look here, Doctor; you said you found the first clew in that injured hand.”
“The first clew and the last,” the doctor told him.
“The last? Did you find something else when you dressed that finger a little while ago?”
The blind man puffed serenely on the pipe. “I found a nasty cut and something foreign imbedded in the cut. It had set up the infection; I could feel it under the pressure of my fingers. I took it out with the tweezers. Something hard and gritty, Captain. I haven’t seen it; it’s safely stowed away in my pocket. But I’ll stake my soul it’s a chipped splinter from a broken blue plate.”
At that moment Joe Morrow saw Lady and Mr. Foster emerge from the orchard, and the man carried a small boy in his arms.
Transcriber’s Note
- The copyright notice from the printed edition was preserved, although this book is in the public domain in the country of publication.
- Typographical errors were corrected without comment.
- Nonstandard spellings and dialect were not changed.