"And after that?" some one asked.
"I lost him. He left to hike to the railroad, and he said nothing of his
plans. If I'd been able to make open inquiries I might have turned
up something, but I couldn't. It's a hard proposition. I had trouble
finding Hattie Thorwald, too. She'd left the hotel, and is living with
her son. She swears she doesn't know where Clifton Hines is, and hasn't
seen him for years."
Bassett had been listening intently, his head dropped forward.
"I suppose the son doesn't know about Hines?"
"No. She warned me. He was surly and suspicious. The sheriff had sent
for him and questioned him about how you got his horse, and I gathered
that he thought I was a detective. When I told him I was a friend of
yours, he sent you a message. You may be able to make something out of
it. I can't. He said: `You can tell him I didn't say anything about the
other time.'"
Bassett sat forward.
"The other time?"
"He is under the impression that his mother got the horse for you once
before, about ten days before Clark escaped. At night, also."
"Not for me," Bassett said decisively. "Ten days before that I was--" he
got out his notebook and consulted it. "I was on my way to the cabin
in the mountains, where the Donaldsons had hidden Jud Clark. I hired a
horse at a livery stable."
"Could the Thorwald woman have followed you?"
"Why the devil should she do that?" he asked irritably. "She didn't know
who I was. She hadn't a chance at my papers, for I kept them on me. If
she did suspect I was on the case, a dozen fellows had preceded me, and
half of them had gone to the cabin."
"Nevertheless," he finished, "I believe she did. She or Hines himself.
There was some one on a horse outside the cabin that night."
There was silence in the room, Harrison Miller thoughtfully drawing at
random on the map before him. Each man was seeing the situation from his
own angle; to Reynolds, its medical interest, and the possibility of
his permanency in the town; to Walter Wheeler, Elizabeth's spoiled young
life; to Harrison Miller, David; and to the reporter a conviction that
the clues he now held should lead him somewhere, and did not.
Before the meeting broke up Miller took a folded manuscript from the
table and passed it to Bassett.