Page:Frank Packard - The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.djvu/208

204 Jimmie Dale read on—and as he read there came again that angry set to his lips. The details were not pleasant. Herman Roessle, the paymaster of the Martindale-Kensington Mills, whose plant was on the Hudson, had gone that morning in his runabout to the nearest town, three miles away, for the monthly pay roll; had secured the money from the bank, a sum of twenty-odd thousand dollars; and had started back with it for the mill. At first, it being broad daylight and a well-frequented road, his nonappearance caused no apprehension; but as early afternoon came and there was still no sign of Roessle the mill management took alarm. Discovering that he had left the bank for the return journey at a few minutes before eleven, and that nothing had been seen of him at his home, the police were notified. Followed then several hours of fruitless search, until finally, with the whole countryside aroused and the efforts of the police augumented [sic] by private search parties, the car was found in a thicket at the edge of a crossroad some four miles back from the river, and, a little way from the car, the body of Roessle, dead, the man's head crushed in where it had been fiendishly battered by some blunt, heavy object. There was no clew—no one could be found who had seen the car on the crossroad—the murderer, or murderers, and the twenty-odd thousand dollars in cash had disappeared leaving no trace behind.

There were several columns of this, which Jimmie Dale skimmed through quickly; but at the end he stared for a long time at the last paragraph. Somehow, strange, to relate, the paper had neglected to turn its "sob" artist loose, and the few words, added almost as though they were an afterthought, for once rang true and full of pathos in their very simplicity—at the Roessle home, where Mrs. Roessle was prostrated, two little tots of five and seven, too young to understand, had gravely received the reporter and told him that some bad man had hurt their daddy.

"Mr. Dale, sir!"

Jimmie Dale lowered his paper. A club attendant was standing before him, respectfully extending a silver card