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He had felt from the first there was something deep and dark with mystery behind the girl who had come to his office with her most amazing employment. He had entertained vague doubts upon hearing of wills and money inheritance at the house where she lived in New York. He recalled the start she had given, while playing at the piano, upon learning he was leaving for Hickwood.
"He may not be guilty it's my business to discover who is," said Garrison, with ready sympathy. "It looks as if he had a motive. With his knowledge of photography and his dabbling in the art, he has almost certainly handled poison the particular poison used to destroy John Hardy's life. He was there in Hickwood at the time of the crime.
"Never saw him," said the coroner. "I couldn't hang around the corpse all day. I'm the busiest man in Branchville and I had to go down to New York the day he come." "Did you take possession of any property that deceased might have had at his room in Hickwood?" "Sure," said Pike. "Half a dozen collars, and some socks, a few old letters, and a box almost full of cigars."
"Foster and Alice will be all right but, where did you find it? Where has it been?" "I found it at the room he occupied in Hickwood and fetched it along." He produced it from his pocket and placed it in her hand. Despite her most courageous efforts she was weak and nervously excited. Her hands fairly trembled as she tore the envelope across. "Take it calmly," said Garrison. "Don't be hurried."
It might have been part of her trickery; he could not tell. The envelope was missing. Where Hardy had been at the time of receiving the note was not revealed. The picture postal-card that Pike had mentioned was also there. It, too, apparently, had come from Dorothy, and had been sent direct to Hickwood.
"No, siree! When Billy Ford and Tom Harris git a cigar it never gits away," said Mr. Pike. "Did you find out where the dead man came from and what he was doing in the village?" "He was stopping down to Hickwood with Mrs. Wilson," answered Pike. "His friend there was Charlie Scott, who's making a flying-machine that's enough to make anybody luny.
Garrison, alone, at nine o'clock, had an impulse to hasten off to Branchville. In the brief time of lying unconscious on the floor when Wicks struck him down, he had felt some strange psychic sense take possession of his being, long enough for the room that Hardy had occupied in Hickwood to come into vision, as if through walls made transparent.
"Have you any idea in the world where the will may be?" "No, I haven't." "You found nothing of it, or anything to give you a hint, when you claimed the body for burial, and examined his possessions in Hickwood?" "No." "Where was Dorothy then?" "I don't know. She's always looked after Foster more than me, he being the weak one and most in need." Desperate for more information.
Her entire stock of nerve was required to go on with the business in hand. "You said my uncle was murdered," she said, in a tone he strained to hear. "What makes you think of such a thing?" "You have not before made the statement that the Hardy in Hickwood was your uncle," he reminded her. "You must have guessed it was my uncle," she replied. "You knew it all the time." "No, not at first.
"You are very fond of Foster?" "I am very fond of Alice." Garrison was glad. He could even have been jealous of a brother. "But how could Foster have tampered with your cigars?" he inquired. "Was he up there at Hickwood when you left them?" "He was there all the time of uncle's visit, in hiding, and even on the night of his death," she confessed in a whisper.
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