The Four-Pools Mystery
"H'm!" said the Colonel. "Two days ago you came to me and wanted two months' pay in advance because you had overdrawn your bank account, and I refused to give it to you. Where, may I ask, were you intending to get the hundred dollars to pay back this amount?"
A quick flush spread over Radnor's face.
"I already had it—Arnold will tell you that, for I borrowed it of him."
"Certainly," I put in pacifically—"that's all settled between Rad and me. I have his note and was glad to accommodate him."
"Don't you get enough from me, that you must ask the guests in my house to supply you with money?"
Radnor's flush deepened but he said nothing. I could see by his eyes however that he would not stand much more.
"Then after you had helped yourself to the money, the bonds were stolen by someone else?" said the Colonel.
"So it appears," said Radnor.
"And have you any theory as to the identity of the thief?"
Rad hesitated a visible instant before replying. The flush left his face and the pallor came back, but in the end he raised his eyes and answered steadily.
"No, father, I have not. I am as much mystified as you are."
"And you heard nothing in the night? As I said before, you are an excellent sleeper!"
Rad caught an ironical undertone in his father's voice.
"I don't understand," he said.
"I am a trifle deaf myself, but still he wakened me.—It's strange that you should be the only one in the house who could sleep through it."
"Sleep through what? I don't know what you're talking about."
I cut in hastily and explained our adventure with Mose's ha'nt.
Radnor listened with troubled eyes but made no comment at the end. His father was watching him keenly, and I don't know whether it was intuition or some knowledge of the truth that made him suddenly put the question:
"You were of course in the house all night?"
"No," Radnor returned, "I was not. I didn't get in till early this morning and I suppose the excitement occurred during my absence."
"I suppose I may not be permitted to inquire where you spent the night—that too is a private matter?"
"Yes," said Radnor, easily, "that too is a private matter."
"And would throw no light on the robbery?"
"None whatever."
Solomon brought in the breakfast and we three sat down, but not to a very cheerful meal. The Colonel wore an angry frown and Rad an air of anxious perplexity. Neither of them indulged in any unnecessary conversation. I knew that the Colonel was more upset by his son's reticence than by the robbery of the bonds, and that it was my presence alone which restrained him from giving vent to his anger. As we rose from the table he said stiffly:
"Well, Rad, have you any suggestion as to how we shall set to work to track down the thief?"
Radnor slowly shook his head.
"I shall have to talk with Mose first and find out what he really saw."
"Mose!" The Colonel laughed shortly. "He's like all the rest of the niggers. He doesn't know what he saw—No sir! I've had enough of this ha'nt business; it's one thing when he spirits chickens from the oven, it's another when he takes to spiriting securities from the safe. I shall telegraph to Washington for a first class detective."
"If you take my advice," said Rad, "you'll not do that. A detective's not much good outside the covers of a book. He'll stir up a lot of notoriety and present a bill; and you'll be no wiser than you were before."
"Whoever stole those bonds will be marketing them within a few days; the interest falls due the first of May. I am not so rich that I can let five thousand dollars go without a move to get it back. I shall telegraph today for a detective."
"Just as you please," said Radnor with a shrug, and he turned toward the door that opened on the gallery. Mose was visible at the end evidently recounting to an excited audience his experiences of the night. Rad beckoned to him and the two turned together across the lawn toward the laurel walk.
It was an hour or so later that Rad presented himself at my door. His colloquy with Mose had increased rather than lessened the mystified look on his face. He waited for no preliminaries this time, but plunged immediately into the matter that was on his mind.
"Arnold, for heaven's sake, stop my father from getting a detective down here. I don't dare say anything, for my opposition will only make him do it the more. But you have some influence with him; tell him you're a lawyer, and will take charge of it yourself."
"Why don't you want a detective?" I asked.
"Good Lord, hasn't our family had notoriety enough? Here's Nan eloping with the overseer, and Jeff the scandal of the county for five years. I can't turn around but some malicious interpretation is put on it, and now that the family ghost has taken to cracking safes gossip will never stop. Get a detective down here who goes nosing about the neighborhood in search of information and there's no telling where the thing will end. Those bonds can't be far. Aren't we more likely to get at the truth, if we lie low and don't let on we're after the thief?"
"Radnor," I said, "will you tell me the absolute truth? Have you any suspicion as to who took those securities? Do you know any facts which might lead to the apprehension of the thief?"
He remained silent a moment, then he parried my question with another.
"What time did all that row occur in the night?"
"I don't know; I didn't think to look, but I should say it was somewhere in the neighborhood of three o'clock. I didn't go to sleep again, and it was about half an hour later that you drove in."
"You heard me?"
"I heard you go and I heard you come; but I did not mention that fact to the Colonel."
Rad laughed shortly.
"I can at least prove an alibi," he said. "You can swear that I was not Mose's devil."
He remained silent a moment with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands studying the floor; then he raised his eyes to mine with a puzzled shake of the head.
"No, Arnold, I haven't the slightest suspicion as to who took those securities. I can't make it out. The robbery must have occurred while I was away. Of course the deeds and insurance policies and coin may have been taken as a blind; but it's queer. The money was in five and ten cent pieces and pennies—we always keep a lot of change on hand to pay the piece-workers during planting season. There was nearly a quart of it altogether and it must have weighed a ton. I can't imagine anyone stealing Government four-per-cents and pennies at the same haul."
"Did you get any light from Mose?" I asked.
"No, I can't make head nor tail out of his story. He isn't given to seeing visions, and as you know, he isn't afraid of the dark. He saw something that scared him; but what it was, I'll be darned if I know!"
"Then why not get a detective down and see if he can't find out?"
Radnor lowered his eyes a moment, then raised them frankly to mine.
"Oh, hang it, Arnold; I'm in the deuce of a hole! There's something else that I don't want found out. It's absolutely unconnected with the robbery, but you bring a detective down here and he's certain to stumble on that instead of the other. I'd tell you if I could, but really I can't just now. It's nothing I'm to blame for—my conduct lately has been immaculate. You get my father to abandon this detective plan, and we'll buckle down together and root out the truth about the robbery."
"Well," I promised, "I'll see what I can do; but as the Colonel says, five thousand dollars is a good deal of money to let slip through your hands without making an effort to get it back. You and I will have to finish the business if we undertake it."
"We will!" he assured me. "We can certainly get at the truth better than an outsider who doesn't know any of the facts. You switch off the old gentleman from putting it in the hands of the police and everything will come out right."
He went off actually whistling again. Whatever had been troubling him for the past two weeks had been sloughed off during the night, and all that remained now was the danger of detection; with this removed he was his old careless self. The loss of the securities was apparently not bothering him. Radnor always did exhibit a lordly disregard in money matters.
I lost no time in taking my errand to the Colonel, but I could discover him in none of the down stairs rooms nor anywhere else about the place. It occurred to me, after half an hour of searching, to see if his horse were in the stable; as I had surmised it was not. He had ordered it saddled immediately after breakfast and had ridden off in the direction of the village, one of the stable-men informed me. I had my own horse saddled, and ten minutes later was riding after him. It surprised me that he should have acted so quickly; the Colonel was usually rather given to procrastination, while Rad was the one who acted. His promptness proved that he was angry.
Four-Pools is about two miles from the village of Lambert Corners which consists of a single shady square. Two sides of the square are taken up with shops, the other two with the school, a couple of churches, and a dozen or so of dwellings. This composes as much of the town as is visible, the aristocracy being scattered over the outlying plantations, and regarding the "Corners" merely as a source of mail and drinks. Three miles farther down the pike lies Kennisburg, the county seat, which answers the varied purposes of a metropolis.
I reined in before "Miller's place," a spacious structure comprising a general store on the right, the post and telegraph office on the left, and in the rear a commodious room where a white man may quench his thirst. A negro must pass on to "Jake's place," two doors below. A number of horses were tied to the iron railing in front and among them I recognized Red Pepper. I found the Colonel in the back room, a glass of mint julep at his elbow, an interested audience before him. He was engaged in recounting the story of the missing bonds, and it was too late for me to interrupt. He referred in the most casual manner to the hundred dollars his son had taken from the safe the night before, a fortunate circumstance, he added, or that too would have been stolen. There was not the slightest suggestion in his tone that he and his son had had any words over this same hundred dollars. The Gaylord pride could be depended on for hiding from the world what the world had no business in knowing.
The telegram to the detective agency, I found, had already been dispatched, and the Colonel was awaiting his answer. It came in a few moments and was delivered by word of mouth, the clerk seeing no reason why he should put himself to the trouble of writing it out.
"They say they'll put one o' their best men on the case, Colonel, an' he'll get to the Junction at five-forty tonight."
The Colonel and I rode home together, he in a more placable frame of mind. Though I dare say he disliked as much as ever the idea of losing his bonds, still the éclat of a robbery, of a magnitude that demanded a detective, was something of a palliative. It was not everyone of his listeners who had five thousand dollars in bonds to lose. I knew that it would be useless to try to head off the detective now, and I wisely kept silent. My mind was by no means at rest however; for an unknown reason I did not want a detective any more than Radnor. I had the intangible feeling that there was something in the air which might better not be discovered.
CHAPTER VII
WE SEND HIM BACK AGAIN
The detective came. He was an inoffensive young man, and he set to work to unravel the mystery of the ha'nt with visible delight at the unusual nature of the job. Radnor received him in a spirit of almost anxious hospitality. A horse was given him to ride, guns and fishing tackle were placed at his disposal, a box of the Colonel's best cigars stood on the table of his room, and Solomon at his elbow presented a succession of ever freshly mixed mint juleps. I think that he was dazed and a trifle suspicious at these unexpected attentions; he was not used to the largeness of Southern hospitality. However, he set to work with an admirable zeal.
He interviewed the servants and farm-hands, and the information he received in regard to things supernatural would have filled three volumes; he was staggered by the amount of evidence at hand rather than the scarcity. He examined the safe and the library window with a microscope, crawled about the laurel walk on his hands and knees, sent off telegrams and gossiped with the loungers at "Miller's place." He interviewed the Colonel and Radnor, cross-examined me, and wrote down always copious notes. The young man's manner was preëminently professional.
Finally one evening—it was four days after his arrival—he joined me as I was strolling in the garden smoking an after dinner pipe.
"May I have just a word with you, Mr. Crosby?" he asked.
"I am at your service, Mr. Clancy," said I.
His manner was gravely portentous and prepared me for the statement that was coming.
"I have spotted my man," he said. "I know who stole the securities; but I am afraid that the information will not be welcome. Under the circumstances it seemed wisest to make my report to you rather than to Colonel Gaylord, and we can decide between us what is best to do."
"What do you mean?" I demanded. In spite of my effort at composure, there was anxiety in my tone.
"The thief is Radnor Gaylord."
I laughed.
"That is absolutely untenable. Rad is incapable of such an act in the first place, and in the second, he was not in the house when the robbery occurred."
"Ah! Then you know that? And where was he, pray?"
"That," said I, "is his own affair; if he did not tell you, it is because it is not connected with the case."
"So! It is just because it is connected with the case that he did not tell me. I will tell you, however, where he spent the night; he drove to Kennisburg—a larger town than Lambert Corners, where an unusual letter would create no comment—and mailed the bonds to a Washington firm of brokers with whom he has had some dealings. He took the bag of coin and several unimportant papers in order to deflect suspicion, and his opening the safe the night before for the hundred dollars was merely a ruse to allow him to forget and leave it open, so that the bonds could appear to be stolen by someone else. Just what led him to commit the act I won't say; he has been in a tight place for several months back in regard to money. Last January he turned a two-thousand dollar mortgage, that his father had given him on his twenty-first birthday, into cash, and what he did with the cash I haven't been able to discover. In any case his father knows nothing of the transaction; he thinks that Radnor still holds the mortgage. This spring the young man was hard up again, and no more mortgages left to sell. He probably did not regard the appropriation of the bonds as stealing, since everything by his father's will was to come to him ultimately.
"As to all this hocus-pocus about the ha'nt, that is easily explained. He needed a scapegoat on whom to turn the blame when the bonds should disappear; so he and this Cat-Eye Mose between them invented a ghost. The negro is a half crazy fellow who from the first has been young Gaylord's tool; I don't think he knew what he was doing sufficiently to be blamed. As for Gaylord himself, I fancy there was a third person somewhere in the background who was pressing him for money and who couldn't be shaken off till the money was forthcoming. But whatever his motive for taking the bonds, there is no doubt about the fact, and I have come to you with the story rather than to his father."
"It is absolutely impossible," I returned. "Radnor, whatever his faults, is an honorable man in regard to money matters. I have his word that he knows no more about the robbery of those bonds than I do."
The detective laughed.
"There is just one kind of evidence that doesn't count for much in my profession, and that is a man's word. We look for something a little more tangible—such as this for example."
He drew from his pocket an envelope, took from it a letter, and handed it to me. It was a typewritten communication from a firm of brokers in Washington.
"Radnor F. Gaylord, Esq.,
"Four-Pools Plantation, Lambert Corners, Va."Dear Mr. Gaylord:
"We are in receipt of your favor of April 29th. in regard to the sale of the bonds. The market is rather slow at present and we shall have to sell at 98¼. If you care to hold on to them a few months longer, there is every chance of the market picking up, and we feel sure that in the end you will find them a good investment.
"Awaiting your further orders and thanking you for past favors,
"We are,"Very truly yours,"Jacoby, Haight & Co.""Where did you get hold of that?" I asked. "It strikes me it's a private letter."
"Very private," the young man agreed. "I had trouble enough in getting hold of it; I had to do some fishing with a hook and pole over the transom of Mr. Gaylord's door. He had very kindly put the tackle at my disposal."
"You weren't called down here to open the family's private letters," I said hotly.
"I was called down here to find out who stole Colonel Gaylord's bonds, and I've done it."
I was silent for a moment. This letter from the brokers staggered me. April twenty-ninth was the date of the robbery, and I could think of no explanation. Clancy, noticing my silence, elaborated his theory with a growing air of triumph.
"This Mose was left behind the night of the robbery with orders to rouse the house while Radnor was away. Mose is a good actor and he fooled you. The obvious suspicion was that the ghost had stolen the bonds and you set out to find him—a somewhat difficult task as he existed only in Mose's imagination. I think when you reflect upon the evidence, you will see that my explanation is convincing."
"It isn't in the least convincing," I retorted. "Mose was not acting; he saw something that frightened him half out of his senses. And that something was not Radnor masquerading as a ghost, for Radnor was out of the house when the robbery took place."
"Not necessarily. The robbery took place early in the evening before all this rumpus occurred. Even if Mose did see a ghost, the ghost had nothing to do with it."
"You have absolutely no proof of that; it is nothing but surmise."
Clancy smiled with an air of patient tolerance.
"How about the letter?" he inquired. "How do you explain that?"
"I don't explain it; it is none of my business. But I dare say Radnor will do so readily enough—there he is going toward the stables; we will call him over."
"No, hold on, I haven't finished what I want to say. I was employed by Colonel Gaylord to find out who stole the bonds and I have done so. But the Colonel did not suspect the direction my investigations would take or he never would have engaged me. Now I am wondering if it would not be kinder not to let him know? He's had trouble enough with his elder son; Radnor is all he has left. The young man seems to me like a really decent fellow—I dare say he'll straighten up and amount to something yet. Probably he considered the money as practically his already; anyway he's been decent to me and I should like to do him a service. Now say we three talk it over together and settle it out of court as it were. I've put in my time down here and I've got to have my pay, but perhaps it would be better all around if I took it from the young man rather than his father."
This struck me as the best way out of the muddle, and a very fair proposition, considering Clancy's point of view. I myself did not for an instant credit his suspicions, but I thought the wisest thing to do was to tell Rad just how the matter stood and let him explain in regard to the letter. I left Clancy waiting in the summer house while I went in search of Rad. I wished to be the one to do the explaining as I knew he was not likely to take any such accusation calmly.
I found him in the stables, and putting my hand on his shoulder, marched him back toward the garden.
"Rad," I said, "Clancy has formed his conclusions as to how the bonds left the safe, and I want you to convince him that he is mistaken."
"Well? Let's hear his conclusions."
"He thinks that you took them when you took the money."
"You mean that I stole them?"
"That's what he thinks."
"He does, does he? Well he can prove it!"
Radnor broke away from me and strode toward the summer house. The detective received his onslaught placidly; his manner suggested that he was used to dealing with excitable young men.
"Sit down, Mr. Gaylord, and let's discuss this matter quietly. If you listen to reason, I assure you it will go no further."
"Do you mean to say that you accuse me of stealing those bonds?" Radnor shouted.
Clancy held up a warning hand.
"Don't talk so loud; someone will hear you. Sit down." He nodded toward a seat on the other side of the little rustic table. "I will explain the matter as I see it, and if you can disprove any of my statements I shall be more than glad to have you."
Radnor subsided and listened scowlingly while the detective outlined his theory in a perfectly non-personal way, and ended by producing the letter.
"Where did you get that?" Rad demanded.
"Out of your coat pocket which I hooked over the transom of the door." He made the statement imperturbably; it was evidently a matter of everyday routine.
"So you enter gentlemen's houses as their guest and spend your time sneaking about reading their private correspondence?"
An angry gleam appeared in Clancy's eye and he rose to his feet.
"I did not come to your house as your guest. I came on business for Colonel Gaylord. Now that my business is completed I will make my report to him and go."
Radnor rose also.
"It's a lie, and you haven't a word of proof to show."
Clancy significantly tapped the pocket that held the letter.
"That," said Radnor contemptuously, "refers to two bonds which I bought last winter with some money I got from selling a mortgage. I preferred to have the investment in bonds because they are more readily negotiable. I left them at my broker's as collateral for another investment I was making. Last week I needed some ready money and wrote to them to sell. My statement can easily be substantiated; no reputable detective would ever base any such absurd charge on the contents of a letter he did not understand."
"Of course," said the detective, "we have tried to get at the matter from the other end; but Jacoby, Haight & Company refuse to discuss the affairs of their clients. I did not press the point as I did not want to stir up comment. However," he smiled, "I must confess, Mr. Gaylord, that I think your explanation a trifle fishy. Perhaps you will answer one question. Did you mail your letter to them in Kennisburg the night of the robbery with a special delivery stamp?"
"It happens that I did, but it was merely a coincidence and has nothing to do with the robbery."
"Will you be kind enough to explain why you drove to Kennisburg in the night and why you needed the money so suddenly?"
"No, I will not. That is a matter which concerns, me alone."
"Very well! As it happens I do not base my charge on the letter; I had already formed my opinion before I knew of its existence. Do you deny that you yourself have encouraged the belief in the ghost among the negroes? That on more than one occasion, you, or your accomplice, Cat-Eye Mose, have masqueraded as the ghost? That, while you were pretending to Colonel Gaylord to be as much puzzled by the matter as he, you were in truth at the bottom of the whole business?"
Radnor glanced uneasily at me and hesitated before replying.
"No," he said at length, "I don't deny that, but I do affirm that it has nothing to do with the robbery."
The detective laughed.
"You must excuse me, Mr. Gaylord, if I stick to the opinion that I have solved the puzzle."
He turned with a motion toward the house, and Radnor barred the entrance.
"Do you think I lie when I say I know nothing of those bonds?"
"Yes, Mr. Gaylord, I do."
For a moment I thought that Radnor was going to strike him, but I pulled him back and turned to Clancy.
"He knows nothing about the bonds," said I, "but nevertheless you must not take any such story to Colonel Gaylord. He is an old man, and while he would not believe his son guilty of theft, still it would worry him. There is something else that happened that night—entirely uncriminal—but which we do not wish him to hear about. Therefore I am not going to let you go to him with this nonsensical tale that you have cooked up."
