Page:Under three flags; a story of mystery (IA underthreeflagss00tayliala).pdf/82

 case I believe that the rest of the race will be plain sailing."

"I fear it will be a long, stern chase."

'Such chases usually are," remarks Barker, composedly. "I have already set the machinery in motion, and the police of the entire country are on the lookout for a chap answering Stanley's description. What makes our task the harder is the probable fact that Stanley is not a member of the criminal class, and so a comparatively easy channel of pursuit is closed. He presumably made for New York, and somewhere in that busy human hive we may run across him."

"Then our labors at this end of the road are about completed?"

"Nearly so. To-morrow morning, before the village is astir, we will go a-fishing. If we find what we expect the case may be precipitated a bit. Otherwise we will shift the scene of our operations to New York, after I have pumped the servants in the Felton family and inquired as far as is possible into the affairs of the bank. Is your vacation about wound up?"

"It will be in a day or so. I have nothing to keep me here longer except a pleasant duty that I owe to myself."

"And that is"

"To make an unprofessional call upon Miss Louise Hathaway."

"Ho! Sits the wind in that quarter?" laughs the detective.

"Don't be absurd, my friend," smiles Ashley. "Miss Hathaway interests me only as would a statue of the Venus de Milo."

"Indeed? Still, men have lost their hearts to a statue."

"In books and plays. If we are to arise at daybreak I would suggest the advisability of retiring."