Hunting Broken Bones
Millbank cherished its tragedy as something that gave it pre-eminence
among its neighbours, and half the male population turned detectives on
the spot. To many members of the community, however, the affair bore
a most serious aspect, heightened by the conviction that no actual
progress had been made towards the solution of the mystery. Such men
as McManus, the county attorney, and the town counsel, looked upon
the testimony which tended to implicate Oldbeg as a concession to the
public demand that something should be done, and as covering rather
than revealing the serious business of the investigation. They were
inclined to be indignant at what they regarded as the direction of
unjust suspicion against an innocent person, and the more so when they
saw how public sentiment was roused against the unfortunate man.
In fact, there were whispers among the least responsible that if the
law was to interpose delays, it might become the duty of the citizens
to take the execution of justice into their own hands. It was the
county judge who first called attention to the danger to the town and
county that lurked in such loose talk, indulged in at the start by idle
men and boys, but working as a leaven that might finally affect the
entire community.
“There’s just the material down there to give your town a blacker
tragedy than it’s had yet,” he said to McManus one day after court.
“The guilty had better go unpunished than be punished through violation
of the law.”
McManus turned sharply, with that nervous quickness that made him
forget the judge in the speaker:
“The guilty! The guilty! No man is guilty till the law has found him
so! How long since suspicion was proof?”
The judge, who appreciated the strain which the death of his partner
and friend had thrown upon McManus, let the brusqueness of the answer
pass, but still was insistent:
“It’s no time for refinements or phrasings. It isn’t the idle alone who
expect impossibilities. Most of your people think Trafford’s failed
before he’s had time to begin. There’s got to be something done to
feed their impatience and gain time. A Yankee’s substitute for doing
something is to hold a public meeting.”
McManus shook his head.
“With the chances that it would end in a hanging-bee,” he said.
When, however, McManus returned to Millbank from the county town, he
found affairs so far more menacing than he had anticipated as to lead
him to take counsel with the more prominent citizens. Naturally almost
the first man to whom he broached the matter was Charles Hunter, the
head of the leading logging firm.
Hunter was a man who at the age of thirty-five was already recognised
as the first business man of the town. Succeeding to a business
built up by his father, he had doubled it and doubled it again. Its
operations extended over the entire northern part of the State, and
into Canada, and were closely interlocked with the immense logging
interests of the Penobscot and the Androscoggin. President of the
Millbank National Bank, he was also on the Board of leading banks
in Augusta, Bangor, and Portland, and as a member of the Governor’s
staff he had attained the rank of colonel--that warlike title which so
many exceedingly peaceful gentlemen parade with pride. In fact, his
operations had touched all interests save politics, for his title had
more of a social than a political significance.
“Undoubtedly,” he said, “Trafford is entitled to make a show for
the money he’s getting, and we can understand his giving us some
horse-play; but it’s going too far when he endangers an innocent
man, to say nothing of the good name of the town. The episode of the
revolver found twenty-four hours after the murder is mere child’s play.
I shouldn’t have thought it would have taken for a moment.”
“You think Trafford put it there?”
“I think he knew when to look for it and when not to. He looked for it
at the right time, at any rate.”
“I don’t think Trafford’s so much to blame for producing the pistol as
Coroner Burke,” McManus said. “I was watching him at the time, and I
thought him annoyed at the question.”
“Whoever is to blame,” Hunter answered, with the positiveness of a man
accustomed to rely much on his own judgment and to have others do the
same, “the mischief’s done. Half the town is certain that Oldbeg is the
murderer. It’s being whispered that Mrs. Parlin hired him to do it, so
she could have the money, and the fact that she doesn’t discharge the
man is held to be proof of the fact. Then, with the logic of dolts,
they declare that she hired Trafford because she was afraid of him.”
A look of horror showed in McManus’s face at this statement of the
public attitude. Surely, Mrs. Parlin had suffered enough without having
to bear this injustice.
“But don’t they see,” he remonstrated, “if this was the case, Trafford
would have been the last to turn suspicion upon Oldbeg?”
“They don’t see anything!” exclaimed Hunter impatiently. “They’re
simply hanging-mad. They believe Trafford too smart not to have
solved this thing in a fortnight, and at the same time they believe
him a big enough fool to have sold himself. They think Oldbeg guilty,
because there’s nobody else in sight, and because they think him
guilty, they must believe that Trafford and Mrs. Parlin are protecting
him. Therefore, Mrs. Parlin must be guilty too, and therefore, again,
Trafford must be trying to cover up the facts.”
Hunter expressed in his somewhat querulous tone much of the feeling
that prevailed in the business community. Men felt it a disgrace that
an unprovoked murder could occur under their very eyes, as it were, and
remain without the slightest progress towards solution for more than
a fortnight. In a large community, the police would have come in for
sneers and ridicule. In this case, the detective had to bear the brunt
of the complaints.
Hunter, intent for the good name of the town, suggested finally that a
subscription reward be offered in addition to that of the county and
town and that offered by Mrs. Parlin. He was willing to guarantee a
substantial sum.
“I think also,” he said, “we should put another detective to work. I
can’t see any harm if Trafford is on the square, and it may do a lot of
good if he isn’t.”
“It’s against all principle to put a case into two men’s hands,”
McManus objected. “We certainly ought to dismiss the one before we hire
a second.”
“We haven’t hired the first yet,” Hunter answered roughly. “We can’t
object to Mrs. Parlin employing a detective, if she wants to; but she
as certainly can’t object to our doing the same thing. If, however, we
put a man to work, let him keep his hands off that statement of Judge
Parlin’s.”
McManus started.
“You think it genuine?”
Hunter looked as if the question tired him. He was a tall dark man,
with an unusually expressive face, and was not accustomed to concealing
his feelings.
“That’s more of your horse-play. Whether the paper’s genuine or not
can’t have any bearing on the murder. It isn’t to be imagined, if
it’s a forgery, that there was a purpose to make it public after the
principals in the affair were dead. It’s a false scent and meant to be
a false scent.”
On the very evening on which Charles Hunter urged the employment of an
additional detective, Trafford was handed a telegram telling him that
Charles Matthewson had left Augusta on the late afternoon train up the
river. It had been an easy matter to ascertain that he had not left the
train either at the main station in Millbank or at the Bridge-stop,
but none the less the detective had an uneasy feeling that the man
might be in town. If so, whom did he come to see and why did he come
and go so mysteriously? He could see no possible connection between
the relationship of Wing with Matthewson and the murder, and yet he
could not divest his mind of the impression that there was some mystery
going on before his very eyes which he had not fathomed, but which, if
fathomed, would bear upon the discovery of the murderer.
A half-hour or so before the down train was due to leave the Millbank
station, he left the hotel and walked down Canaan Street to its
junction with Somerset Street and the covered and enclosed bridge that
spans the river at that point. Here, upon the very brink of the river,
fifty feet above the water, stood the small brick building of the
Millbank National Bank. The bridge and the bank lay in shadow, for it
was a moonless night and the street lamp at the entrance of the bridge
was not lighted. Above the bridge was the dash and roar of the falls;
below, the steady murmur of the narrowed current, between its rocky
walls that rise more than fifty feet from the water’s edge.
“Thunder!” he thought, “there are some creepy places around this town,
especially when they can’t sponge on the moon for light. If I was an
inspired detective, I’d know whether there was any danger in that
bridge. As I ain’t, I guess I’ll take the centre.”
He advanced into the darkness of the drive, which was pitchy black,
solid plank walls dividing it from the footwalk on either hand. He was
half-way through, when he suddenly felt the presence of some one near
him, though he could see or hear nothing. He stopped, and absolute
stillness reigned, save the tumult of the water above and below. He
had walked close to the wall on the down-river side, so that his form
might not be outlined against the opening of the bridge, and he was
conscious that he was as completely concealed, since he had advanced
a rod into the darkness, as were his companions. It was a question of
endurance, and in that his training gave him the advantage.
Softly there came out of the darkness a noise as of the moving of a
tired leg. Inch by inch Trafford crept close to the board wall, until
now it was at his back, with one of the heavy timbers protecting his
left arm. His right was free for defence. The sound indicated a man
within a few feet of him on his left.
Suddenly there was the sharp swish of a club in the air, and the thud
of contact with a living body, followed by a loud cry of pain and
“_Sacré; c’est moi, Pierre!_”
“_Mon dieu! Où est le chien?_”
Two men rushed past toward the Millbank end, with a jabber of Canadian
French, from which Trafford learned that the assailed feared that his
shoulder was broken.
“One marked for identification,” he chuckled, as he slid along in the
deep shadow toward the farther end.
He had satisfied himself of one thing he was anxious about, and with
another at hand had no time to waste on a man who could be found in the
morning for the mere asking. He was too keen on the question whether
Charles Matthewson was in Millbank, to allow a needless diversion.
If Matthewson was in town, it showed a terrible uneasiness at the
bottom of his wanderings--an uneasiness that forbade his trusting to
others for information and yet demanded information at first hands, so
imperatively that he was willing to take enormous risks to obtain it.
“It would have been a coincidence, if I’d been murdered to-night,”
said Trafford, in his wonted confidential talk with himself; “with
Matthewson in town as he was the night of the other murder.”
Trafford crossed the railroad bridge and so attained the Millbank
station without attracting attention. He saw every one of the
half-dozen passengers who boarded the train, but found no trace of the
man he was seeking. As the train slowed up for the Bridge stop, he
swung off into the dark in time to catch sight of a figure swinging on
from the same dark side. It was not Matthewson, and he was just turning
away, when suddenly he changed his purpose and as the train moved off
was again on the rear platform. He rode there to the next station, and
then changed his quarters to the baggage car. He had identified his
man; now he was after his destination.
This proved to be Waterville. A private carriage was waiting, and into
it the man jumped, driving away rapidly. There was but one way to
follow and keep the carriage in sight, and Trafford made a half-mile
in quick time, clinging to the back-bar and resting his weight on his
hands and arms. He dropped to the ground and crept away as the carriage
turned into the driveway of an extensive country place, which the
detective recognised as that of Henry Matthewson, a younger brother of
Charles, and a man largely interested in the logging business.
“Humph,” he said. “This time he comes part way and they bring him the
news. Well; it ain’t of my murder, though some folks may wish it was
before many hours have passed.”
Before daylight, he had his operatives on hand while he himself took
the early train back to Millbank. The delicate work just now was to
be done there, and this he would trust to no one save himself. His
appreciation of the importance of the case and the sensation that would
be produced when it was finally unravelled, had increased immensely
since he crossed Millbank Bridge, and he had no purpose to see it
botched by clumsy handling.
After breakfast he went directly to Mr. Wing’s office and sought an
interview with Mr. McManus.
“I want,” he said, “to go through all the papers again in Wing’s safe
and, if you have any private papers of his, through those as well. So
far, we are absolutely adrift and we have a double task on our hands,
for we’ve got to clear Oldbeg of suspicion as well as discover the real
murderer.”
“Then you dismiss all suspicion that Oldbeg had anything to do with the
murder?”
“If you can dismiss an idea you never entertained. In a certain sense
every man in town was under suspicion--Oldbeg no more than another.
This job, however, was not the work of a clumsy man like Oldbeg. When
we find the murderer, you’ll find a man of quick motions, delicacy of
touch, strong purpose, assured position, and considerable refinement.
You’ll find a man to whom murder is repugnant and who resorted to it
only as a last desperate chance. You’ll find therefore a man who was
desperate, whose all was at stake, and who knew that Wing’s continued
living meant the loss of that all. Now, if you can tell me where there
is such a man, I’ll give you proof of his guilt so conclusive before
night that no one will hesitate to approve his arrest.”
As he spoke, McManus grew pale. Something brought a terrible picture
before his eyes. As never before, he realised the desperate chase in
which they were involved.
“It was, then, in your opinion no mere desire for sordid gain that
impelled to the crime?”
“Who has gained by it? Some one that by it has been saved from loss,
and tremendous loss. Don’t fool yourself. Don’t look for any common
criminal, and above all don’t flatter yourself for one moment that
the criminal will stop at any additional crime to prevent detection.
If detected, he’s lost everything. He can’t lose any more with twenty
murders to his charge.”
McManus glanced over his shoulder, as if he expected to see the
murderer rise out of vacancy in his own defence.
“What connection then has Judge Parlin’s statement with the crime?” he
asked uneasily.
“It’s a mere incident--an accident, as you might say, that holds its
place by its own sensational character and the tensity of nervous
interest aroused in the public mind by the crime itself. It had nothing
to do with the crime, or the cause that led up to it. I don’t believe
the murderer knew of its existence. At the same time it’s one of those
accidents that may lead to things to which it’s in no way related. It
may be the very thing that’ll ultimately set us on the right track.
Don’t lose sight of it for a moment.”
McManus looked as if the caution were wholly uncalled for. There was
not much danger of his losing sight of anything that had to do with
the murder. One might have suspected from his looks that he wished he
could.
After making an appointment for three in the afternoon to examine
papers, Trafford left the office and went to a little dingy room, in
Gray’s Inn Lane, where he was joined almost immediately by a tall,
seedy-looking man, evidently of Canadian stock, whose French was only
a trifle worse than his English. He was a man whom few men would have
trusted and whom Trafford had always found absolutely trustworthy.
The man shook his head, with many a gestured negative. Not a man was
missing from Little Canada; every man who was open to suspicion was
accounted for, and not one of them showed a broken collar-bone or a
shattered arm.
“But there are other Canucks in town, outside Little Canada,” said
Trafford.
The report included all. The man had determined the whereabouts of
every Canadian of sixteen years of age and upwards, and there was
not one who bore marks of the blow delivered on the bridge the night
before.
“But he was a Canuck,” said Trafford, with positiveness that admits
no question; “and it’s a bigger miracle than any of their relics ever
performed before, if he don’t carry a broken bone to-day. There’s
somebody missing.”
The man shook his head. He had accounted for the last of them.
“Do you think it was a dream or a nightmare?” Trafford demanded, with
some asperity.
The man shrugged and lifted his shoulders, in deprecation of the tone
of the demand.
“All right,” said Trafford at last. “Take the afternoon train to
Augusta and resume your work there. I’ll give this personal attention.”
The man hesitated a moment and then, coming close to him and lowering
his voice, spoke rapidly and anxiously.
“You are taking risks, Mr. Trafford. This is no ordinary case. You
can’t tell what you’ve got against you. Two men can go safely where one
can’t.”
“And one can go safely sometimes where two are a danger. I’ve taken
risks all my life--it’s my business to take ’em. You don’t suppose I
chose this business because of its freedom from danger, do you?”
“A brave man doesn’t court danger; he simply meets it bravely when it
comes.”
“Well, I’ll try to meet it that way if it comes. At present Millbank
looks like a fairly safe place. I don’t think I’ll get my throat cut
here.”
“But you aren’t going to stay here,” the man urged. “You know you
aren’t. You’re going----”
“We’ll dispense with information as to where I’m going,” Trafford
interrupted. “It’s probably safe to state, but it’s possibly not. We’ll
keep on the absolutely safe side as long as possible. Your train leaves
in fifteen minutes.”
The gesticulating Canadian reappeared on the instant. Discipline
asserted itself, and the man prepared to obey without further
remonstrance.