Part 31 (2/2)

”So you said,” Hastings reminded, looking hard at him.

”Well!” Crown blurted it out. ”Do you suspect him? Are you working on that line--at all?”

Hastings paused. He had no desire to mislead him. And yet, there was no reason for confiding in him--and delay was at present the Hastings plan.

”I'll tell you, Crown,” he said, finally; ”I'll work on any line that can lead to the guilty man.--What do you know?”

”Who? Me?” Crown's tone indicated the absurdity of suspecting Jarvis.

”Not a thing.”

But it gave Hastings food for thought. Was Mrs. Brace in communication with Jarvis? And did Crown know that? Was it possible that Crown wanted to find out whether Hastings was having Jarvis shadowed? How much of a fool was the woman making of the sheriff, anyway?

Another thing puzzled him: why did Mrs. Brace suspect Arthur Sloane of withholding the true story of what he had seen the night of the murder?

Hastings' suspicion, amounting to certainty, came from his knowledge that the man's own daughter thought him deeply involved in the crime.

But Mrs. Brace--was she clever enough to make that deduction from the known facts? Or did she have more direct information from Sloanehurst than he had thought possible?

He decided not to leave the sheriff entirely subject to her schemes and suggestions. He would give Mr. Crown something along another line--a brake, as it were, on impulsive action.

”You talk about arresting Webster right away--or Sloane,” he began, suddenly confiding. ”You wouldn't want to make a mistake--would you?”

Crown rose to that. ”Why? What do you know--specially?”

”Well, not so much, maybe. But it's worth thinking about. I'll give you the facts--confidentially, of course.--Hub Hill's about a hundred yards from this house, on the road to Was.h.i.+ngton. When automobiles sink into it hub-deep, they come out with a lot of mud on their wheels--black, loamy mud. Ain't any other mud like that Hub Hill mud anywhere near here. It's just special and peculiar to Hub Hill. That so?”

”Yes,” agreed Crown, absorbed.

”All right. How, then, did Eugene Russell keep black, Hub Hill mud on his shoes that night if he went the four miles on foot to where Otis picked him up?”

”Eh?” said Crown, chin fallen.

”By the time he'd run four miles, his shoes would have been covered with the red mud of that mile of 'dirt road' or the thin, grey mud of the three miles of pike--wouldn't they? They'd have thrown off that Hub Hill mud pretty quick, wouldn't they?”

”Thunder!” marvelled Crown. ”That's right! And those shoes were in his room; I saw 'em.” He gurgled, far back in his throat. ”Say! How did he get from Hub Hill to where Otis picked him up?”

”That's what I say,” declared Hastings, very bland. ”How?”

To Lucille, after Crown's departure, the detective declared his intention to ”stand by” her, to stay on the case. He repeated his statement of yesterday: he suspected too much, and knew too little, to give it up.

He told her of the responsibility he had a.s.sumed in giving the sheriff the fict.i.tious Sloane statement. ”That is, it's not fict.i.tious, in itself; it's what your father has been saying. But I told Crown, and I'm going to tell the newspaper men, that he says it's all he knows, really.

And I hate to do it--because, honestly, Miss Sloane, I don't think it is all. I'm afraid he's deceiving us.”

She did not contradict that; it was her own opinion.

”However,” the old man made excuse, ”I had to do it--in view of things as they are. And he's got to stick to it, now that I've made it 'official,' so to speak. Do you think he will?”

She did not see why not. She would explain to him the importance, the necessity, of that course.

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