The same idea seemed to be in Norton's mind. "You think you will
have something tangible soon?" he asked eagerly.
"I've had more slender threads than these to work on," reassured
Kennedy. "Besides, I'm getting very little help from any of you.
You yourself, Norton, at the start left me a good deal in the dark
over the history of the dagger."
"I couldn't do otherwise," he defended. "You understand now, I
guess, how I have always been tied, hand and foot, by the Whitney
influence. You'll find that I can be of more service, now."
"Just how did you get possession of the dagger?" asked Kennedy,
and there flashed over me the recollection of the story told by
the Senora, as well as the letter which we had purloined.
"Just picked it up from an Indian who had an abnormal dislike to
work. They said he was crazy, and I guess perhaps he was. At any
rate, he later drowned himself in the lake, I have heard."
"Could he have been made insane, do you think?" ruminated Craig.
"It's possible that he was the victim of somebody, I understand.
The insanity might have been real enough without the cause being
natural."
"That's an interesting story," returned Norton. "Offhand, I can't
seem to recall much about the fellow, although some one else might
have known him very well.
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