Читать книгу The Millbank Case: A Maine Mystery of To-day онлайн

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Beyond this, however, was the joy of the chase, which is absent from no man and least of all from the trained detective. There was a problem to solve, and, danger or no danger, it was as impossible for Trafford to refuse to solve it as to refuse to breathe. Whatever use he was or was not to make of it, he would know the truth.

He was not, however, so intent upon this one feature of the case as to neglect Jim Shepard. The second day, he slipped over to Portland and found that young countryman at work and exceedingly homesick in what was, to his narrow experience, a great city. Finding that Trafford knew Millbank, he threw his heart open to him and talked as freely as he would to Oldbeg himself. Trafford let him talk. There was a flood of irrelevant matter, but the detective’s experience was too broad for him to decide in advance what might and what might not be valuable. On the whole, however, it was a dreary waste, until he touched on the night he left Millbank.

“I wasn’t the only feller,” he said; “that nigh missed that train. Jest as ’twas startin’, a feller rushed out from behind Pettingill’s ’tater storehouse and caught the front end of the car. I thought he was goin’ to miss an’ I swung back to see him drop off; but he clung like a good one an’ finally got his foot on the step. I tell you, he was nigh clean tuckered out when he came into the car, fur he was a swell an’ warn’t used to using his arms that-a-way.”