“But that doesn’t help us,” commented Hardacre frowningly. “We’ve come across no soldered-up tin.”
“No, no, not yet,” continued the ex-convict, as excitedly as before, “but what else did we see among those odds and ends in that box?” He raised his hand impressively. “Why, a good length of unused lead gas pipe!”
“From which he’d made sinkers,” snarled Hardacre, “for those fishing lines that were there, too.”
Werrick almost danced in his triumph. “No, no, no!” He calmed down and, with an effort, spoke very quietly. “That bank clerk, sir, had brought with him a length of lead piping, perhaps eight or ten feet long, and he soldered one end round that tin because”—he hesitated tantalizingly—“because lead doesn’t rust in water and he was going to lower the whole thing into the mill stream.”
