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Now I know that your mind didn't do anything of the sort. Come on, now, Algy, who sent this to you?" "Cousin of mine up in Harwick. I wish you weren't so Billy-be-dashed sharp, Average. I used to visit in Harwick, so they asked me to get you interested in Bailey Prentice's case. He's the lost boy." "You've done it. Now tell me all you know."
Average Jones took train for Harwick, and within a few hours was rubbing his hands over an open fire in the parsonage, whose stiff and cheerless aspect bespoke the lack of a woman's humanizing touch for the Reverend Mr. Prentice was a widower.
All Harwick, having had its attention attracted by the explosion, and seen the portent with its own eyes, believed that a huge meteor had fired the building. So Tuxall and Company had a well attested wonder from the heavens. That's the little plan which Bailey's presence threatened to wreck. Is it your opinion that the stars are inhabited, Prentice?" "What!" cried the minister, gaping.
"I left Dantzic," replied he, "about three weeks ago; and I should have been in London five days since, but a favorite horse of mine, which I brought with me, fell sick at Harwick, and I waited until he was well enough to travel." Whilst he spoke he never withdrew his eyes from the face of Thaddeus, who at the words Dantzic and horse recollected his faithful Saladin; almost hoping that this Mr.
"Quite all right, Gordon," the captain boomed. "Harwick!" He finished the roll, and settled back, smiling. "I guess that's all, boys. Thanks from the Mayor. And go on home.... Oh, Fell, Gordon, Lativsky stick around. I've got some overtime for you, since you need extra money. The boys out in Ward Three are shorthanded. Afraid I'll have to order you out there!"
Spofford produced a letter which gave the outlines of the case. Bailey Prentice's disappearance it was set forth, was the lesser of two simultaneous phenomena which violently jarred the somnolent New England village of Harwick from its wonted calm. The greater was the "Harwick meteor."
"It was him gummed the whole game." "Mr. Tuxall, I regret to say," remarked Average Jones, "has left for parts unknown, so the Harwick authorities inform me, probably foreseeing a charge of arson." "Arson?" repeated the Reverend Mr. Prentice in astonishment. "Of course. Only oil and matches could have made a barn flare up, after a three-days' rain, as his did. Now, Bailey, to continue.
"Say," said Farley with conviction, "I believe you're the devil's first cousin." "When you left me in Harwick," said the Reverend Peter Prentice, before Average Jones could acknowledge this flattering surmise, "you said that strangers had done the kidnapping. How did you tell they were strangers then?"
"From the fact that they didn't know who Bailey was, and had to advertise him, indefinitely, as 'lost lad from Harwick." "And that there were two of them?" pursued the minister. "I surmised two minds: one that schemed out the 'planting' of the clothes on the shore; the other, more compassionate, that promulgated the advertisement."
If you were to visit Tuxall's barn, you would undoubtedly find on the boulder underneath it a carving resembling a human form, a hoax more ambitious than the Cardiff Giant. He carted the rock in from some quarry and did the scorching and carving himself, I suppose." "And you discovered all that in a half-day's visit to Harwick?" asked the Reverend Mr. Prentice incredulously.
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