Part 24 (1/2)

”There speaks the great detective,” he said. ”You know, Harley, how Hobart is always arguing from the effect back to the cause.”

Hobart, in fact, was not a political writer, but a ”murder mystery” man, and the best of his kind in New York, but the regular staff correspondent of his paper, the _Leader_, being ill, he had been sent in his place. He was a Harvard graduate and a gentleman with a taste for poetry, but he had a peculiar mind, upon which a murder mystery acted as an irritant--he could not rest until he had solved it--and his paper always put him on the great cases, such as those in which a vast metropolis like New York abounds. Now he was restless and discontented; the tour seemed to him the mere reporting of speeches and obvious incidents that everybody saw; there was nothing to unravel, nothing that called for the keen edge of a fine intellect.

”Grayville, with all its advantages as a place of rest, is sure to be like the other mountain towns,” he said, somewhat sourly--”the same houses, the same streets, the same people, I might almost say the same mountains. There will be nothing unusual, nothing out of the way.”

Harley had taken the paper from Barton's hands and was reading it.

”At any rate, if Grayville is not unusual, it is to have an unusual time,” he interrupted.

”How so?”

”It is to hear Jimmy Grayson speak Monday, and it is going to hang a man Tuesday. See, the two events get equal advance s.p.a.ce, two columns each, on the front page.”

He handed the paper to Hobart, who looked at it a little while and then dropped it with an air of increasing discontent.

”That may mean something to the natives,” he said; ”it may be an indication to them that their place is becoming important--a metropolis in which things happen--but it is nothing to me. This hanging case is stale and commonplace; it is perfectly clear; a young fellow named Boyd is to be hanged for killing his partner, another miner; no doubt about his guilt, plenty of witnesses against him, his own denial weak and halting--in fact, half a confession; jury out only five minutes; whole thing as bald and flat as this plain through which we are running.”

He tapped with his finger on the dusty car-window, and his expression was so gloomy that the others could not restrain a laugh.

”Cheer up, old man,” said Barton. ”Four more hours and we are in Grayville; just think of that wonderful hotel, with its more wonderful beds and its yet more wonderful kitchen.”

The hotel was all that they either expected or hoped, and the dawn brought a beautiful Sunday, disclosing a pretty little frontier city with its green, irrigated valley on one side and the brown mountains, like a protecting wall, on the other. Harley slept late, and after breakfast came out upon the veranda to enjoy the luxury of a rocking-chair, with the soft October air around him and the majesty of the mountains before him. He hoped to find Sylvia there, but neither she nor any of the ladies was present. Instead, there was a persistent, inquiring spirit abroad which would not let him rest, and this spirit belonged to Hobart, the ”mystery” man.

Harley had not been enjoying the swinging ease of the rocking-chair five minutes before Hobart, the light of interest in his eyes, pounced upon him.

”Harley, old fellow,” he exclaimed, ”this is the first place we've struck in which Jimmy Grayson is not the overwhelming attraction.”

”The hanging, I suppose,” said Harley, carelessly.

”Of course. What else could there be? It occurred to me last night, when I was reading the paper, that I might scare up a feature or two in the case, and I was out of my bed early this morning to try. It was a forlorn hope, I'll admit, but anything was better than nothing, and I've had my reward. I've had my reward, old fellow!”

He chuckled outright in his glee. Harley smiled. Hobart always interested and amused him. The instinctive way in which he unfailingly rose to a ”case” showed his natural genius for that sort of thing.

”I haven't seen Boyd yet,” continued Hobart, excitedly, ”but I've found out this much already--there are people in Grayville who believe Boyd innocent. It is true that he and Wofford--the murdered man--had been quarrelling in Grayville, and Boyd was taken at the shanty with the blood-stained knife in his hand; but that doesn't settle it.”

Harley could not restrain an incredulous laugh. ”It seems to me those two circ.u.mstances, omitting the other proof, are pretty convincing,” he said.

Hobart flushed. ”You just wait until I finish,” he said, somewhat defiantly. ”Now Boyd, as I have learned, was a good-hearted, generous young fellow. The quarrel amounted to very little, and probably had been patched up before they reached their shack.”

”That is a view which the jury evidently could not take.”

”Juries are often wooden-headed.”

”Of course--in the eyes of superior people.”

”Now don't you try to be satirical--it's not your specialty. I mean to finish the tale. If you read the paper, you will recall that the shanty where the murder occurred was only a short distance from the mountain-road, and there were three witnesses--Bill Metzger, a dissolute cowboy who was pa.s.sing, and who, attracted by Wofford's death-cry, ran to the cabin and found Boyd, blood-stained knife in hand, bending over the murdered man; Ed Thorpe, a tramp miner, who heard the same cry and who came up two or three minutes later; and, finally, Tim Williams, a town idler, who was on the mountain-side, hunting. The other two heard him fire his gun a few hundred yards away, and called to him. When he arrived, Boyd was still dazed and muttering to himself, as if overpowered by the horror of his crime.”

”If that isn't conclusive, then nothing is,” said Harley, decisively.

”It is not conclusive; there was no real motive for Boyd to do such a thing.”