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Updated: June 27, 2025
"Wait a few minutes and see," was Garrison's reply. "Meantime, here is a photograph of the man who threatened Hardy's life. And, by the way," he added, holding the picture with its face toward himself, in attitude of carelessness, "I forgot to say before that a man was seen entering Hardy's room, in Hickwood, the night of the murder.
Garrison walked along the road to Hickwood out of sheer love of being in the open, and also the better to think. Unfortunately for the case in hand, however, his thoughts wandered truantly back to New York and the mystery about the girl masquerading to the world as his wife. His meditations were decidedly mixed.
The escape from New York's noise and turmoil was welcome to his weary body. He had been on a strain day after day, and much of it still remained. Yet, having cleared away the mystery concerning Hardy's death, he felt entitled to a let-down of the tension. In the morning he was early on the road to Hickwood his faculties all eagerly focused on the missing will.
He had practically made up his mind that John Hardy had died, as the coroner had found, of heart disease, or apoplexy, even in the act of lighting up to smoke. He questioned the man further, made up his mind to visit Charles Scott and Mrs. Wilson, in Hickwood, and was presently out upon the road.
He was turning away from his desk at last to leave for his lodgings, thence to journey to Hickwood, when a messenger-boy abruptly appeared with a telegram. When Garrison had signed, he opened the envelope and read the following: "Wire me you have arrived unexpectedly and will be here at eight, then come.
The man who had followed all the way from Dorothy's residence not only was waiting, but remained on Garrison's trail. At a quarter of ten Garrison ensconced himself in a train for Branchville. His "shadow" was there in the car. The run required fifty minutes. Hickwood, a very small village, was passed by the cars without a stop. It was hardly two miles from the larger settlement.
He felt the need for light all the light procurable in Hickwood. Aware of the misleading possibilities of a theory preconceived, he was not prepared even now to decide that inventor Scott was necessarily guilty. He found himself obliged to admit that the indications pointed to the half-crazed man, to whom a machine had become a god, but nothing as yet had been proved.
How did it happen that your uncle's life was insured for that inventor in Hickwood, Charles Scott?" "They were lifelong friends," said Dorothy. "They began as boys together. Uncle John was saved by this Mr. Scott, when he was twenty-one his life was saved, I mean. And he was very much in love with Mr. Scott's sister. But something occurred, I hardly know what.
There was nothing to be done at Branchville or Hickwood at night, and but little, for the matter of that, to be done by day. Tomorrow would be ample time to return to that theater of uncertainty. He longed for one thing only another sight of Dorothy enshrined within his heart.
"To Branchville and Hickwood." The playing suddenly ceased. She looked up at him swiftly. In nervous haste she resumed her music. "Not on detective work? You mentioned insurance." "It concerns insurance." She was silent for a moment. "When do you return?" "I hardly know," he answered. "And I suppose I've got to start at once in order to maintain our little fiction."
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