"You see," he framed the conclusion for her, "how hard he makes it for us to keep him out of trouble--if that gets out. He's put his hand on the live wire of circ.u.mstantial evidence, a wire that too often thrashes about, striking the wrong man."

"And Berne?" she cried out. "I think I could stand anything if only I knew----"

But this time the mutinous sobs came crowding past her lips. She could not finish the inquiry she had begun.

XVIII

THE MAN WHO RODE AWAY

It was early in the afternoon of Wednesday when Mr. Hastings, responding to the prolonged ringing of his telephone, took the receiver off the hook and found himself in communication with the sheriff of Alexandria county. This was not the vacillating, veering sheriff who had spent nearly four days accepting the hints of a detective or sitting, chameleon-minded, at the feet of a designing woman. Here was an impressive and self-appreciative gentleman, one who delighted in his own deductive powers and relished their results.

He said so. His confidence fairly rattled the wire. His words annihilated s.p.a.ce grandly and leaped into the old man's receptive ear with sizzling and electric effect. Mr. Crown, triumphant, was glad to inform others that he was making a hit with himself.

"h.e.l.lo! That you, Hastings? Well, old fellow, I don't like to annoy you with an up-to-date rendition of 'I told you so!'--but it's come out, to the last syllable, exactly as I said it would--from the very first!"

Ensued a pause, for dramatic effect. The detective did not break it.

"Waiting, are you? Well, here she goes; Russell's alibi's been knocked into a thousand pieces! It's blown up! It's gone glimmering!--What do you think of that?"

Hastings refrained from replying that he had regarded such an event as highly probable. Instead, he inquired:

"And that simplifies things?"

"Does it!" exploded Mr. Crown. "I'm getting to you a few minutes ahead of the afternoon papers. You'll see it all there." An apologetic laugh came over the wire. "You'll excuse me, I know; I had to do this thing up right, put on the finishing touches before you even guessed what was going on. I've wound up the whole business. The Washington police nabbed Russell an hour ago, on my orders.

"'Simplifies things?' I should say so! I guess you can call 'em 'simplified' when a murder's been committed and the murderer's waiting to step into my little ring-tum-fi-diddle-dee of a country jail! 'No clue to this mystery,' the papers have been saying! What's the use of a clue when you _know_ a guy's guilty? That's what I've been whistling all along!"

"But the alibi?" Hastings prompted. "You say it's blown up?"

"Blown! Gone! Result of my sending out those circulars asking if any automobile parties pa.s.sed along the Sloanehurst road the murder night.

Remember?"

"Yes." The old man recalled having made that suggestion, but did not say so.

"This morning the chief of police of York--York, Pennsylvania--wired me.

I got him by long-distance right away. He gave me the story, details absolutely right and straight, all verified--and everything. A York man, named Stevens, saw a newspaper account, for the first time this morning, of the murder. He and four other fellows were in a car that went up Hub Hill that night a little after eleven--a few minutes after.--Hear that?"

"Yes. Go on."

"Stevens was on the back seat. They went up the hill on low--terrible piece of road, he calls it--they were no more than crawling. He says he was the only sober man in the crowd--been out on a jollification tour of ten days. He saw a man slide on to the running board on his side of the car as they were creeping up the hill. The rest of the party was singing, having a high old time.

"Stevens said he never said a word, just watched the guy on the running board, and planned to crack him on the head with an empty beer bottle when they got on the straight road and were hitting up a good clip--just playing, you understand.

"After he'd watched the guy a while and was trying to fish up a beer bottle from the bottom of the car, the chauffeur slowed down and hollered back to him on the back seat that he wanted to stop and look at his radiator--it was about to blow up, too hot. He'd been burning the dust on that stretch of good road.

"When he slowed down, the guy on the running board slipped off. Stevens says he rolled down a bank."

The jubilant Mr. Crown stopped, for breath.

"That's all right, far as it goes," Hastings said; "but does he identify that man as Russell?"

"To the last hair on his head!" replied the sheriff. "Stevens'

description of the fellow is Russell all over--all over! Just to show you how good it is, take this: Stevens describe the clothes Russell wore, and says what Otis said: he'd lost his hat."

"Stevens got a good look at him?"

"Says the headlights were full on him as he stood on one side of the road, there on Hub Hill, waiting to slide on the running board.--And this Stevens is a shrewd guy, the York chief says. I guess his story plugs Russell's lies, shoots that alibi so full of holes it makes a sifter look like a piece of sheet-iron!

"That car went up Hub Hill at seven minutes past eleven--that means Russell had plenty of time to kill the girl after the rain stopped and to get out on the road and slip on to that running board. And the car slowed up, where he rolled off the running board, at eighteen minutes past eleven.

"Time's right, location's right, identification's right!--Pretty sweet, ain't it, old fellow? Congratulate me, don't you? Congratulate me, even if it does step on all those mysterious theories of yours--that right?"

Hastings bestowed the desired felicitations upon the exuberant conqueror of crime.

Turning from the telephone, he gazed a long time at the piece of grey envelope on the table before him. He had clung to his belief that, in those fragments of words, was to be found a clue to the solution of the mystery. He picked up his knife and fell to whittling.

Outside in the street a newsboy set up an abrupt, blaring din, shouting sensational headlines:

"SLOANEHURST MYSTERY SOLVED!--RUSSELL THE MURDERER!--ALIBI A FAKE!"

The old man considered grimly, the various effects of this development in the case--Lucille Sloane's unbounded relief mingled with censure of him for having added to her fears, and especially for having subjected her to the ordeal of last night's experience with Mrs. Brace--the adverse criticism from both press and public because of his refusal to join in the first attacks upon Russell, Arthur Sloane's complacency at never having treated him with common courtesy.

His thoughts went to Mrs. Brace and her blackmail schemes, as he had interpreted or suspected them.

"If I'd had a little more time," he reflected, "I might have put my hand on----"

His eyes rested on the envelope flap. His mind flashed to another and new idea. His muscles stiffened; he put his hands on the arms of his chair and slowly lifted himself up, the knife dropping from his fingers and clattering on the floor. He stood erect and held both hands aloft, a gesture of wide and growing wonder.

"Cripes!" he said aloud.

He picked up the grey paper with a hand that trembled. His pendent cheeks puffed out like those of a man blowing a horn. He stared at the paper again, before restoring it to its envelope, which he put back into one of his pockets.

"Cripes!" he said again. "It's a place! Pursuit! That's where the----"

He became a whirlwind of action, covered the floor with springy step.

Taking a book of colossal size from a shelf, he whirled the pages, running his finger down a column while he murmured, "Pursuit--P-u-r--P-u--P-u----"

But there was no such name in the postal directory. He went back to older directories. He began to worry. Was there no such postoffice as Pursuit? He went to other books, whirling the pages, running down column after column. And at last he got the information he sought.

Consulting a railroad folder, he found a train schedule that caused him to look at his watch.

"Twenty-five minutes," he figured. "I'm going!"