Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1899-10-26
CHAPTER II.
pARRENT FINDS A CLFw.

NM NJ N !"
To say that Herbert Darrent passed a
GOOD night would have been to have
stretched veracity to breaking point.
1t was cold in that small bedroom in
the village hotel, and the diacordant
Changing of the cracked bell of the
church clock from quarter to quarter
and from hour to hour irritated him in
his restlessness. His mind was far too
active TO allow his eyes to be wOoed by
slumber, and through the long watches
of the bitter winters night the few
threads of information that he had
| gathered tangled themselves into twists
and knots in his brain, and the very
fact that prima facie the solution of
the mystery seemed to be so simple only
served to worry and ~irritate him more.
Detectives, after all, are only human
beings, not mechanical c~ontrivances,
and their inteilects, trained though they
be to keener and clearer intuition than
tbIsa possessed by ordinary men, do not
Yender tlIem free from the worries In
toparable from complicated problems Of
which the solution is obscure.
Darr"nt lay awake for hours wonder
ing and specializing. Those clews which
seemed to point at once to the culprlt
often, he knew, failed utterly upon
closer investigation, broke off sudden
and short, and, once the thread snap
ped, one was left absolutely without
the possibility of following the trail for
another inch and had to bark back t.
the very commencement again, only
perhaps to have the same experience
and the same result. One never hears
of a detectives failures. 1t is only his
victories that are noised abroad. One
does not learn of all the byways and
crossroads, all the narrow lanes and
blind alleys, that his search leads him
into. 1t is only when success has
crowned his patient task that n hears
of him at all.
Once when he had dozed off for a lit
tie while the dreary, nlonOtonous recital
of the untimely death of the wretched
90 COWS disturbed his brain, and ht
awuke with a shiver to realize that,
whatever the winter of 1881 in Nor
combe was like to have killed the score
of cows III one night, the winter of 1896
was quite as severe a n as he ever
desired to experience. Thinking of the
COWS recalled the brief conversation he
had with the driver of the dogcart
Evidently that individual did not thinl
very much of Josiah Marsden and
moreover, had admitted to having
grudge against the murdered man be
cause his rent had been raised Was i
possible hat that man who told so glib
ly TIE story of a ghost was implicated
in the murder? Perhaps. One neveI
knew. But against that suppositioi
there was the paper that had been writ
ten by the dying man, the half finished
accusation that he had been mcidereC
by Astray. What a colossal idiot Dob
son was to have shown that paper t.
Astray! And directly Astray had seei
it he fed. That certainly looked lik'
guilt and yet might only be a suddel
spasm of fear-fear that a train of cir
cumstantial evidence might be gathore,
together that would inevitably put tn
rope around his neck, be he innocen
or be he guilty.
There were indeed many black factor
in the case that pointed to Astray. lie
him recapitulate them;
% Astray vas not Mardsen's owl
son, but had been adopted by him, AM
who could tell what Astray's anteced
ents We're or why Marsden had KEEP
him2
(2) Astray and old Marsden ha,
quarreled and separated some two year
back, Why2
(3) Astray had returned, after an al
sence of two yenrs, on the very night G
the murder. Why2
(4) The unfinished note written b
tho dying man seemed to accuse Astra
of the murder,
(5) Astray had fled.
Yes all these facts certainly did poin
to Astray Marsden AS the murderer. A
through the long winter night the di'
jointed fragments of the puzzle jun
bled themselves about in the pcrplexe
mind of Herbert Darrent until the daw
. broke gray and cherries.
| He gazed out Of the window acros