CHAPTER XIX

LARRY ON THE TRAIL

Those were busy days for Larry Dexter. Not only did he have to consider his paper, and arrange for a story each day about the bank mystery, but he had to act as a sort of detective, and keep after the various ends of the puzzling case. No wonder that he was not home much, and that his mother complained that she was forgetting what he looked like.

For the _Leader_ wanted something each day about the big story. Very frequently a newspaper will begin a “crusade,” or take up some special line, and the reporter assigned to it has to turn in so much “copy” a day, no matter whether there is any news or not.

No sooner had the young reporter heard, from the bank president, that the suspected clerk had disappeared, than he arranged to go to Hackenford.

“There’s where the main news is now,” thought Larry. “There must be some reason why Witherby did not come back. He must suspect something. Maybe he’s skipped out with the million, and doesn’t miss the thousand-dollar bill he left behind. I’ve got to get after him, no matter where he’s gone.”

The young reporter prepared his story of the finding of the bag, so cunningly hidden behind the old ledgers. Then, after a talk with Mr. Emberg, he left for Hackenford.

“See what you can pick up there, Larry,” suggested the city editor. “If you think it will spoil the case to write anything about it, don’t do it. What we want you to do is to find the thief and the million, and there won’t be any doubt but what you’ll get a ‘beat’ out of it.”

Arriving in Hackenford, Larry at once sought out the detective who had been sent to watch the boarding-house where Witherby had his room. Larry had been told where to look for the official.

The latter, who was a good man in his own line, which was getting evidence against counterfeiters, was all at sea when it came to spying on a person such as the reporter believed Harrison Witherby to be. The detective had engaged a room across the street from the boarding-house, giving it out that he was a photographer, looking for new subjects.

To carry out this idea he had improvised a shelf on the window ledge of his room, and was making blue prints of nothing in particular when Larry found him, for the detective had not given up the case, though it looked hopeless.

“Well?” asked the young reporter.

“No, bad,” replied the detective, shortly. “I’ve kept a careful watch of that place over there, and I’m sure your man hasn’t come in or out. I’ve been at the window nearly all the while from early this morning, before daylight, when I got here, until now, and nobody, at all resembling the person you spoke of, has shown up.”

“How about back doors?” asked Larry.

“I’ve got a man with me. He’s guarding the back. He hasn’t seen any one, either.”

“You don’t mean to tell me that no one has gone in or out of that boarding-house since before breakfast this morning?” asked Larry, in surprise.

“Of course not,” replied the detective. “A lot of people came out, and some went in. I’ve got descriptions of all of ’em, but none fit. Here, I’ll read ’em to you,” and he proceeded to do so. There were women and men who had gone in, or come out, but no one tallied with the description of Witherby. The only person to enter the back door was a milkman, and Larry at once dismissed him from consideration.

“Well, I guess he didn’t come back here then,” the young reporter remarked, referring to Witherby. “He must have gotten suspicious and left. I think I’ll try and get up to his room again.”

“Think there may be more clews there?” asked the representative of the law.

“There might be. Let’s see, you’ve got a note here of a man with a long, white beard entering the boarding-house.”

“Yes, he went in early this morning, soon after I got here. It was shortly after breakfast, and the woman here was quite surprised to get one as a boarder so early. I told her I wanted to get some photographs of the sunrise, and she thought that was all right. The white-bearded man entered, and he hasn’t come out yet, so he must be there.”

“And no one has come out who looks like Witherby?”

“Not a soul. I’ve been right on the job.”

Larry hardly knew what to do. It seemed that the bank clerk was not in his boarding-house, and yet the young reporter had learned not to trust to appearances.

“I think I’ll just go over and take a look, and make some inquiries,” he decided. “You had better stay around here. You may get some clew when you least expect it.”

“All right!” agreed the detective, “though I think your man has skipped out, and never came near this place.”

Larry shrugged his shoulders. He did not know what to think. A few minutes later he was talking to Mrs. Boland.

“A man with a white beard!” she exclaimed when the young reporter had asked if she had such a boarder. “Why, there’s no one like that in this house! You must be mistaken.”

But Larry knew he was not. He also knew what to expect.

“I see,” he reasoned. “Witherby came back here, disguised as an old man. That’s why the detective didn’t know him. And he probably went out disguised like a baker, or a butcher, and so he got away. He fooled the detective all right, and he’s fooled me. I’ve got to get after him.”

He thought rapidly for a few minutes.

“May I go to Mr. Witherby’s room again?” he asked of the landlady. She gave him permission.

But it was quite a different room to which the young reporter gained entrance a little later. All the bank clerk’s possessions had been taken away. The thousand-dollar bill was gone, and so was the false, sandy moustache.

“He’s skipped all right,” mused Larry. “He came in here while it was dark this morning, and sneaked his things out. Then he left himself. Now it’s going to be a job to find him.”

“He had his board all paid up,” said the landlady.

“A pity he wouldn’t, with a million dollars,” thought Larry.

Once more his brain worked rapidly.

“If this thing comes out,” he reasoned, “all the other papers will jump to the conclusion that Witherby is the thief. They’ll have stories about him. I’ve got to keep this quiet until I find him, and clinch things. I’ll have to arrange with Mr. Bentfield for secrecy.”

He did so, planning to have it generally understood at the bank that the clerk had not yet returned from his trip to the town of Russellville, where he had been sent. In that way nothing came out that would spoil Larry’s chance for a beat. He got a fine exclusive tale about the finding of the empty valise.

“And now what are you going to do, Larry?” asked Mr. Emberg, when Larry reported at the office of the _Leader_.

“I’m going to get after Witherby,” declared the young reporter.

“But how?”

“I don’t know yet. He must have left some kind of a trail. I’m going to Russellville, and see what time he left, and what train he took.”

“He evidently came back to New York, by all accounts.”

“Yes, and I’m going to have my own troubles to trace him from there. New York is so big.”

“I’m afraid I’ve given you too hard an assignment, Larry.”

“No, Mr. Emberg. I’ll get to the bottom of this mystery yet. You just wait.”

But several days went by, and Larry had to admit that he was baffled at every turn. The Russellville clews availed him nothing.

One afternoon he came in from reporting a big fire, to find a telegram awaiting him. Eagerly he tore it open.

“Anything of importance, Larry?” asked the city editor, who was passing through the room at that moment.

“I don’t know,” answered the reporter, “and yet it might be. It’s a wire from Bert Bailey, the old fisherman on the Jersey coast, who figured in the finding of Mr. Potter, the missing millionaire, you remember.”

“What does he say?”

“Why, he tells me he has a story for me. I asked him to let me know whenever anything unusual occurred down there, and he wires me this:

“‘Queer man down here. Seems to be made of money. Better come down.’”

“Made of money!” cried the city editor. “Larry, get right after that. Get on the trail at once! I believe that is Witherby who is hiding there!”