like a devilish crime than this.”
As he said this, he began to search in the right-hand pocket of his well-worn and baggy linen suit and finally extracted Roberta’s letter, which he handed his friend, drawing up a chair and seating himself while the district attorney proceeded to read.
“Well, this does look rather suspicious, don’t it?” he announced, as he finished. “You say they haven’t found him yet. Well, have you communicated with this woman to see what she knows about it?”
“No, Orville, I haven’t,” replied Heit, slowly and meditatively. “And I’ll tell you why. The fact is, I decided up there last night that this was something I had better talk over with you before I did anything at all. You know what the political situation here is just now. And how the proper handling of a case like this is likely to affect public opinion this fall. And while I certainly don’t think we ought to mix politics in with crime there certainly is no reason why we shouldn’t handle this in such a way as to make it count in our favor. And so I thought I had better come and see you first. Of course, if you want me to, Orville, I’ll go over there. Only I was thinking that perhaps it would be better for you to go, and find out just who this fellow is and all about him. You know what a case like this might mean from a political point of view, if only we clean it up, and I know you’re the one to do it, Orville.”
“Thanks, Fred, thanks,” replied Mason, solemnly, tapping his desk with the letter and squinting at his friend. “I’m grateful to you for your opinion and you’ve outlined the very best way to go about it, I think. You’re sure no one outside yourself has seen this letter?”
“Only the envelope. And no one but Mr. Hubbard, the proprietor of the inn up there, has seen that, and he told me that he found it in her pocket and took charge of it for fear it might disappear or be opened before I got there. He said he had a feeling there might be something wrong the moment he heard of the drowning. The young man had acted so nervous – strange-like, he said.”
“Very good, Fred. Then don’t say anything more about it to any one for the present, will you? I’ll go right over there, of course. But what else did you find, anything?” Mr. Mason was quite alive now, interrogative, dynamic, and a bit dictatorial in his manner, even to his old friend.
“Plenty, plenty,” replied the coroner, most sagely and solemnly. “There were some suspicious cuts or marks under the girl’s right eye and above the left temple, Orville, and across the lip and nose, as though the poor little thing mighta been hit by something – a stone or a stick or one of those oars that they found floating up there. She’s just a child yet, Orville, in looks and size, anyhow – a very pretty girl – but not as good as she might have been, as I’ll show you presently.” At this point the coroner paused to extract a large handkerchief and blow into it a very loud blast, brushing his beard afterward in a most orderly way. “I didn’t have time to get a doctor up there and besides I’m going to hold the inquest down here, Monday, if I can. I’ve ordered the Lutz boys to go up there to-day and bring her body down. But the most suspicious of all the evidence that has come to light so far, Orville, is the testimony of two men and a boy who live up at Three Mile Bay and who were walking up to Big Bittern on Thursday night to hunt and fish. I had Earl take down their names and subpoena ’em for the inquest next Monday.”
And the coroner proceeded to detail their testimony about their accidental meeting of Clyde.
“Well, well!” interjected the district attorney, thoroughly interested.
“Then, another thing, Orville,” continued the coroner, “I had Earl telephone the Three Mile Bay people, the owner of the hotel there as well as the postmaster and the town marshal, but the only person who appears to have seen the young man is the captain of that little steamboat that runs from Three Mile Bay to Sharon. You know the man, I guess, Captain Mooney. I left word with Earl to subpoena him too. According to him, about eight-thirty, Friday morning, or just before his boat started for Sharon on its first trip, this same young man, or some one very much like the description furnished, carrying a suitcase and wearing a cap – he had on a straw hat when those three men met him – came on board and paid his way to Sharon and got off there. Good-looking young chap, the captain says. Very spry and well-dressed, more like a young society man than anything else, and very stand-offish.”
“Yes, yes,” commented Mason.
“I also had Earl telephone the people at Sharon – whoever he could reach – to see if he had been seen there getting off, but up to the time I left last night no one seemed to remember him. But I left word for Earl to telegraph a description of him to all the resort hotels and stations hereabouts so that if he’s anywhere around, they’ll be on the lookout for him. I thought you’d want me to do that. But I think you’d better give me a writ for that bag at Gun Lodge station. That may contain something we ought to know. I’ll go up and get it myself. Then I want to go to Grass Lake and Three Mile Bay and Sharon yet to-day, if I can, and see what else I can find. But I’m afraid, Orville, it’s a plain case of murder. The way he took that young girl to that hotel up there at Grass Lake and then registered under another name at Big Bittern, and the way he had her leave her bag and took his own with him!” He shook his head most solemnly. “Those are not the actions of an honest young man, Orville, and you know it. What I can’t understand is how her parents could let her go off like that anywhere with a man without knowing about him in the first place.”
“That’s true,” replied Mason, tactfully, but made intensely curious by the fact that it had at least been partially established that the girl in the case was not as good as she should have been. Adultery! And with some youth of means, no doubt, from some one of the big cities to the south. The prominence and publicity with which his own activities in connection with this were very likely to be laden! At once he got up, energetically stirred. If he could only catch such a reptilian criminal, and that in the face of all the sentiment that such a brutal murder was likely to inspire! The August convention and nominations. The fall election.
“Well, I’ll be switched,” he exclaimed, the presence of Heit, a religious and conservative man, suppressing anything more emphatic. “I do believe we’re on the trail of something important, Fred. I really think so. It looks very black to me – a most damnable outrage. I suppose the first thing to do, really, is to telephone over there and see if there is such a family as Alden and exactly where they live. It’s not more than fifty miles direct by car, if that much. Poor roads, though,” he added. Then: “That poor woman. I dread that scene. It will be a painful one, I know.”
Then he called Zillah and asked her to ascertain if there was such a person as Titus Alden living near Biltz. Also, exactly how to get there. Next he added: “The first thing to do will be to get Burton back here” (Burton being Burton Burleigh, his legal assistant, who had gone away for a week-end vacation) “and put him in charge so as to furnish you whatever you need in the way of writs and so on, Fred, while I go right over to see this poor woman. And then, if you’ll have Earl go back up there and get that suitcase, I’ll be most obliged to you. I’ll bring the father back with me, too, to identify the body. But don’t say anything at all about this letter now or my going over there until I see you later, see.” He grasped the hand of his friend. “In the meantime,” he went on, a little grandiosely, now feeling the tang of great affairs upon him, “I want to thank you, Fred. I certainly do, and I won’t forget it, either. You know that, don’t you?” He looked his old friend squarely in the eye. “This may turn out better than we think. It looks to be the biggest and most important case in all my term of office, and if we can only clean it up satisfactorily and quickly, before things break here this fall, it may do us all some good, eh?”
“Quite so, Orville, quite so,” commented Fred Heit. “Not, as I said before, that I think we ought to mix politics in with a thing like this, but since it has come about so – ” he paused, meditatively.
“And in the meantime,”
