The captain mounted the porch steps. The doctor, fishing out his pipe,
methodically stuffed it with tobacco.
"I can't understand," he said musingly, "why you didn't light out last
night, Ira, after trying to shoot Lady. Afraid to run and lose five
thousand dollars, and afraid to stay and be caught. You were in one sweet
peck of trouble, weren't you, Ira?" Ira said nothing.
"How were you going to work it? Collect the money and then get word to
them where to find the boy?"
The hired man glared in impotent fury.
Captain Tucker, looking slightly dazed, came back to the car. "They
picked up our Italian in a small village fifteen miles above Peekskill."
"Search him, Captain?"
"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.