George Dyre Eldridge

“ Then came the thought of Trafford. Trafford had, of course, followed up this clue and, equally of course, had unearthed the facts. He, therefore, was in the market, with the danger that he might not prove as “honourable” as Cranston purposed being, and, therefore, might damage the price that the latter had expected to obtain. Indeed, it was an awkward predicament for a man who had a valuable secret to sell and natural purchasers at hand, yet wished at the same time to shape his course to the demands of fair dealing and honour. ”

“ Unless one knew the unbending spirit of the man in matters of right and wrong, he must fail to understand the keenness of feeling covered by the apparently cold, formal statement of fact to which Judge Parlin had confined his written words. To the witness on the witness rack, however, those words were as if the living man spoke again and laid bare a heart torn with the humiliation of self-condemnation, more terrible to him than the judgment of any human tribunal. ”

“ A woman sits and thinks and dreads, because she cannot act. In the dead night, I heard footsteps prowling about the place—or thought I did, and I lay in an agony of terror—not for myself, but because it was not for me that the danger threatened. When he was at Norridgewock at court and would drive home after dark, I sat and trembled until I had him again in my arms and knew that once more the chance had passed him by. ”

“ McManus asked.
“It’s my business to take responsibility. I’ve taken it often to the extent of risking my life—I may do so again; but when there’s a murderer at large and I’m set to find him, I don’t stop because my life is endangered or because another is put to inconvenience. If Oldbeg’s held for the murder, it’ll be inconvenient for him, but not so inconvenient as it would be for me to be murdered because I’m on the track of the right man.” ”

“ McManus demanded.
“I’ve been on his track from the moment I entered that library and knew that it had been searched by the man who fired the fatal bullet. I’ve been on his track from that day to this, and I shall keep on it until I catch up with him or he kills me; but as surely as that last happens, he’ll swing. It isn’t given to any man to commit murder twice and cover his tracks. If I go down, it’ll end in his going up.”
“But really, Mr. Trafford, you take this thing more seriously than I imagined. You’re not in earnest in this talk of an attempt to murder you!” ”

“ Suddenly his attention was again aroused.
“What is the nature of these papers?” the other was asking. “With knowledge of that, I could narrow the circle of interest, so that I would have to deal with only a few men.”
“It can’t be the men who are interested in the papers by reason of their contents who did the murder,” said Matthewson, speaking rapidly. “I know them and can answer for every one of them—that is, so far as they knew of the existence of the papers. It is some one who regards them from the point of their saleability. It’s their money value.” ”

“ I have no wish to know his name; but I am charged only to speak to one man, and I shall know him by a name. You can give it me?”
“If it’s my name you want, it’s Trafford. The murderer attempted first to rob or murder me in the covered bridge at Millbank, before he committed the actual murder,” answered the detective.
“I did not doubt before,” the priest answered, with something of stateliness; “only when a trust is given, one must be certain. The message is that the man who was drowned was not murdered. It was an accident, in which the one barely escaped and was unable to save the other.” ”

“ Matthewson faced him like a man at bay; then, as he saw his unflinching purpose, he yielded and answered:
“The papers purport to impugn titles to a million dollars’ worth of land and two millions’ worth of stumpage. They impugn too the honour of the men who hold those titles.”
It was Trafford’s turn for surprise. The words took him back to the great scandal of the Public Lands Office, before and while Matthewson was Governor—the one storm that it had seemed for a time even his political resources could not weather. ”

“ Such men as McManus, the county attorney, and the town counsel, looked upon the testimony which tended to implicate Oldbeg as a concession to the public demand that something should be done, and as covering rather than revealing the serious business of the investigation. They were inclined to be indignant at what they regarded as the direction of unjust suspicion against an innocent person, and the more so when they saw how public sentiment was roused against the unfortunate man. ”

“ Judge Parlin was less than sixty years of age when he died and left a widow, the Parlin homestead, and an estate of private debts, that seemed to breed as Wing attempted to untangle affairs. For years his income had been large and his expenses small. His townsmen had rated him as their richest man who was not of the great Millbank logging firms. There was not a man but would have considered it an insult to the town to hint that Judge Parlin was worth less than a hundred thousand dollars. ”

“ The roll of the land is to the southwest, where all through the summer days the sun lies in warm splendour, that seems to live in the heart and juices of the red and yellow fruit, which is the pride of Millbank. ”

“ If you’re going to set a man at work, you’d better take him. There are two things for him to do: First, keep track of Trafford and let him give us notice quick if he hears of the papers; second, work up the story of Wing’s birth. We’ve got to keep that more in the public eye. I can’t for the life of me see anything in it to lead to the murder, but the public think there’s some connection between the two, and we mustn’t let them lose sight of it.”
136 “But there must have been some motive in the murder,” Hunter affirmed. ”

“ Trafford; you can’t deal with every one the same way. If you want to find out anything from me, you mustn’t go at it as if I was a country bumpkin whom your very name would scare.”
“Bless you, I don’t,” said Trafford. “Now if you were a country bumpkin, as you are pleased to put it, I’d lead up to the matter gently and so have it all out of you before you knew what I was at. Not being a country bumpkin, I come at you fair and square to save your time and mine too. What were you doing in Millbank on the evening of the tenth? ”

“ Where was the Pierre who had struck the blow on the bridge, and who must be able to tell the story of the man’s drowning? These were the questions which were dinning themselves in Trafford’s brain and imperiously demanding an answer.
The news of the finding of the body spread rapidly through Millbank, but with comparatively trifling sensation. Men were drowned each year in the river. The driving business was full of risks and men fell victims to it each spring. It was not like a murder—a blow from no one knew where, falling164 no one knew why. ”

“ Leaving the house cautiously, with the box under his arm, he hurried down the hill, at the foot of which lay the heavy shadows of the great Lombardy poplars. It seemed to him that he had never seen the shadows so black as they were to-night. As he entered the blackness, he quickened his pace almost to a run, and was almost in the light again when there came what seemed to him a flash of flame, then deeper darkness and oblivion. ”

“ Trafford completed the sentence. McManus hesitated and grew pale.
“My God, Trafford; do you see what that leads to?”
“I see what you think it leads to. You think it leads to the conclusion that Wing was murdered by somebody in your office, somebody who has been there at least two years. I think that’s what you lawyers call a non sequitur.”
“At the office, the papers might be stolen; here they could be stolen only after the murder of Wing. Why shouldn’t the thief be one and the same in both cases?”
“Because many a man will steal where only one will commit murder. ”

“ She grew pale as at the inquest before she answered as to the first knowledge of Wing’s death, and her companion expected for the moment that she would faint. But she was a woman equal to noteworthy sudden efforts, and even as he watched she overcame the momentary weakness. Yet it was with pale lips she stammered:
“I understand. It might have been the judge.”
37 Trafford waited, seemingly expecting something more, but when the pause grew awkward, he continued, “He told you he had a letter to write before he went to bed. Had he written it?”
“I don’t know. It’s a thing we never shall know.” ”

“ After a silence that lasted some time, the other turned to Trafford and demanded:
“Did you know Hunter was in this thing when you set me to hunting Canucks round Millbank?”
“Certainly,” answered Trafford. “I’ve known198 it since a half-hour after the attack was made on me at the bridge. Why?”
“Thunder! Hunter was one of the men of whom I thought it safe to make open enquiries about Canucks I was looking for.”
“It’s never safe,” Trafford said, “to make enquiries of any one, unless you are willing that everybody should know, or anxious that one man should. ”

“ I’d rather any time clear a man who is unjustly charged than prove a man, thought innocent, guilty,” answered Trafford.
“Maybe so, but that isn’t the kind of work the world gives you most credit for. If you can hang a man, it thinks you’ve done something big; but if you stop them from hanging a man, they think they’ve been cheated.” ”

“ The Story of the Papers TRAFFORD went back to Millbank more seriously alarmed than at any time in his whole professional career. Matthewson would unquestionably inform the others that he had not the papers; and as certainly warn them he was after them, with the determination to secure them. It was well within reason that they would regard it as safer that they remained in the hands of a murderer whom they protected, than that they should fall into those of a detective, who would use them to convict and thus make them public. ”

“ McManus said. “I was watching him at the time, and I thought him annoyed at the question.”
“Whoever is to blame,” Hunter answered, with the positiveness of a man accustomed to rely much on his own judgment and to have others do the same, “the mischief’s done. Half the town is certain that Oldbeg is the murderer. It’s being whispered that Mrs. Parlin hired him to do it, so she could have the money, and the fact that she doesn’t discharge the man is held to be proof of the fact. Then, with the logic of dolts, they declare that she hired Trafford because she was afraid of him.” ”

“ On the night of the 10th of May, 1880, the light burned late in Lawyer Wing’s library. It was the scandal of Millbank that this occurred often. The village was given to regarding the night as a time when no man should work. “Early to bed and early to rise” was its motto, and though an opposite practice had left Theodore Wing with more of health, wealth, and wisdom than most Millbankians possessed, he had never succeeded in reconciling his townsmen to his methods. ”

“ A crowd gathered and, in spite of Charles Matthewson’s efforts to change the subject, persisted in discussing the murder, which was still a live topic wherever Judge Parlin and Lawyer Wing had been known. To Matthewson’s increased annoyance, he noted that Trafford had moved to a nearer table, where he could catch the talk.
“What kind of man would Judge Parlin have been, if the story were true?” Mrs. Matthewson asked listlessly.
“Oh, yes; but you know that’s not the same. He was a mere youngster, and a designing woman you know can do anything with a man. ”

“ If we can’t find the murderer, we can at least prove that it isn’t he.”
“Unfortunately, until we find the man, the majority will believe him guilty,” Trafford replied.
125 “What right had you to throw suspicion on him?” she demanded.
“The right of the coroner to know every fact that bears on the case. It would have been as unjustifiable to conceal Oldbeg’s purchase of a revolver, as it would to conceal the finding of the weapon.” ”

“ I am his murderer.”
272 It was late when Trafford had quieted her so that he dared trust her even with Mary Mullin. Even this he did not do, without first giving her a stern warning as to the necessity of self-restraint.
“We’re on the last stretch now,” he said. “What’s done must be done quickly and silently. These men haven’t committed murder yet, but they wouldn’t hesitate to, if they were once convinced that safety lay in that direction. In forty-eight hours they’ll see that it’s safer for this murder to remain a mystery, and then it’ll be dangerous to move—it may mean death. ”

“ McManus turned sharply, with that nervous quickness that made him forget the judge in the speaker:
“The guilty! The guilty! No man is guilty till the law has found him so! How long since suspicion was proof?”
The judge, who appreciated the strain which the death of his partner and friend had thrown upon McManus, let the brusqueness of the answer pass, but still was insistent:
103 “It’s no time for refinements or phrasings. It isn’t the idle alone who expect impossibilities. Most of your people think Trafford’s failed before he’s had time to begin. ”

“ He felt, rather than saw, that on the edge of the light stood his assistant also covering the man with his revolver. The man moved as if to obey the order to throw up his arms, and then, with a quickness of which none guessed him capable, struck Trafford’s191 arm a blow that caused it to drop numbly by his side, sending the pistol’s discharge into the earth. With the same movement the man crouched half to earth, and thus escaped the other’s shot. ”