Page:Under three flags; a story of mystery (IA underthreeflagss00tayliala).pdf/339

 thoroughfare. As I crossed the bridge I saw Mr. Hathaway standing on the steps of the bank, delivering a note to a boy, and when he re-entered the building I followed him.

"'What do you want?' he demanded, almost fiercely. I told him, and he broke into a torrent of abuse. Naturally hot-tempered, I answered his railings in kind, and I know not what might have happened had not Mr. Hathaway suddenly ended the dispute by seizing me by the shoulder and pushing me through the bank door to the street, threatening, as he did so, to have the law on me if I continued my attentions to his daughter. Through the glass panel in the door I watched him walk rapidly away in the darkness of the interior; saw him as for an instant his form passed into the lighted office in the rear of the bank. Then the door to that room closed. I never saw Roger Hathaway again."

"That is sufficient," says Barker, as Ames pauses. "Your further progress up to to-day is known to me."

"Indeed?"

"Yes. And I may say that from the outset neither Mr. Ashley nor myself believed you guilty of the murder of Roger Hathaway. At the most, we considered that you might have been a witness to the tragedy. But your testimony is the last link in the chain. I am now prepared, gentlemen, to relate what in all human probability happened in Raymond on the evening of Memorial Day last year."

"Pardon me, Mr. Barker," Van Zandt breaks in, abruptly. "I regret to tell you that the trail which you have so patiently followed has led you to what I should judge, from your preliminary remarks, to be a false conclusion."

"What!" cries the detective, starting from his chair.

"You think Cyrus Felton killed Roger Hathaway. So did I once. We were wrong. If Cyrus Felton was responsible for Hathaway's death it was only indirectly, and the Raymond tragedy was the cause of more misery to him than any human being should be compelled to bear."