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
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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
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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
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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,” continued the district attorney “if
you’ll have Earl have some pictures made of the exact
position where the boat, oars, and hat were found, as well
as mark the spot where the body was found, and subpcena
as many witnesses as you can, I’ll have vouchers for it all
put through with the auditor. And to-morrow or Monday I’ll
pitch in and help myself.”
And here he gripped Heit’s right hand—then patted him on
the shoulder. And Heit, much gratified by his various moves
so far—and in consequence hopeful for the future—now
took up his weird straw hat and buttoning his thin, loose
coat, returned to his office to get his faithful Earl on the long
distance telephone to instruct him and to say that he was
returning to the scene of the crime himself.
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Chapter 4
ORVILLE MASON could readily sympathize with a family
which on sight struck him as having, perhaps, like himself
endured the whips, the scorns and contumelies of lift. As he
drove up in his official car from Bridgeburg at about four
o’clock that Saturday afternoon, there was the old
tatterdemalion farmhouse and Titus Alden himself in his
shirt-sleeves and overalls coming up from a pig-pen at the
foot of the hill, his face and body suggesting a man who is
constantly conscious of the fact that he has made out so
poorly. And now Mason regretted that he had not
telephoned before leaving Bridge-burg, for he could see
that the news of his daughter’s death would shock such a
man as this most terribly. At the same time, Titus, noting his
approach and assuming that it might be some one who was
seeking a direction, civilly approached him.
“Is this Mr. Titus Alden?”
“Yes, sir, that’s my name.”
“Mr. Alden, my name is Mason. I am from Bridgeburg,
district attorney of Cataraqui County.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Titus, wondering by what strange chance
the district attorney of so distant a county should be
approaching and inquiring of him. And Mason now looked
at Titus, not knowing just how to begin. The bitterness of
the news he had to impart—the crumpling power of it upon
such an obviously feeble and inadequate soul. They had
paused under one of the large, dark fir trees that stood in
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front of the house. The wind in its needles was whispering
its world-old murmur.
“Mr. Alden,” began Mason, with more solemnity and
delicacy than ordinarily characterized him, “you are the
father of a girl by the name of Bert, or possibly Alberta, are
you not? I’m not sure that I have the name right.”
“Roberta,” corrected Titus Alden, a titillating sense of
something untoward affecting his nerves as he said it.
And Mason, before making it impossible, probably, for this
man to connectedly inform him concerning all that he
wished to know, now proceeded to inquire: “By the way, do
you happen to know a young man around here by the name
of Clifford Golden?”
“I don’t recall that I ever hard of any such person,” replied
Titus, slowly.
“Or Carl Graham?”
“No, sir. No one by that name either that I recall now.”
“I thought so,” exclaimed Mason, more to himself than to
Titus. “By the way,” this shrewdly and commandingly,
“where is your daughter now?”
“Why, she’s in Lycurgus at present. She works there. But
why do you ask? Has she done anything she shouldn’t—
been to see you about anything?” He achieved a wry smile
while his gray-blue eyes were by now perturbed by puzzled
inquiry.
“One moment, Mr. Alden,” proceeded Mason, tenderly and
yet most firmly and effectively. “I will explain everything to
you in a moment. Just now I want to ask a few necessary