The Four Pools Mystery (16 page)

He pulled it to the floor as he spoke, and another with it. A space some three feet high was visible; by crawling one could make his way along without hitting the ceiling.

"Come on!" said Terry, scrambling to the top of the pile and pulling me after him, "we've struck the trail of our ghostly friend unless I'm very much mistaken.--Look at that!" He pointed to a muddy foot-mark plainly outlined on one of the sacks. "Don't disturb it; we may want to compare it with the marks in the cave.--Hello! What's this? The print of a bare foot--that's our friend, Mose."

He took out a pocket rule and made careful measurements of both prints; the result he set down in a note book. I was quite as excited now as Terry. We crawled along on all fours until we reached the open trap; there was no trace here of either spider-webs or dust. We scrambled into the loft without much difficulty, and found a large room with sloping beams overhead and two small windows, innocent of glass, at either end. The room was empty but clean; it had been thoroughly swept, and recently. Terry poked about but found nothing.

"H'm!" he grunted. "Mose cleaned well.--Ah! Here we are!"

He paused before a horizontal beam along the side wall and pointed to a little pile of ashes and a cigar stub.

"He smokes cigars, and good strong ones--at least he isn't a lady. Did you ever see a cigar like that before?"

"Yes," I said, "that's the kind the Colonel always smoked--a fresh box was stolen from the dining-room cupboard a day or so after I got here. Solomon said it was the ha'nt, but we suspected it was Solomon."

"Was the cupboard unlocked?"

"Oh, yes; any of the house servants could have got at it."

"Well," said Terry, poking his head from the windows for a view of the ground beneath, "that's all there seems to be here; we might as well go down."

We boosted up the two meal bags again, and started back toward the house. Terry's eyes studied his surroundings keenly, whether for the sake of the story he was planning to write or the mystery he was trying to solve, I could only conjecture. His glance presently fixed on the stables where old Uncle Jake was visible sitting on an upturned pail in the doorway.

"You go on," he ordered, "and have 'em put dinner or supper or whatever you call it on the table, and I'll be back in three minutes. I want to see what that old fellow over there has to say in regard to the ghost."

It was fifteen minutes later that Terry reappeared.

"Well," I inquired as I led the way to the dining-room, "did you get any news of the ghost?"

"Did I! The Society for Psychical Research ought to investigate this neighborhood. They'd find more spirits in half an hour than they've found in their whole past history."

Terry's attention during supper was chiefly directed toward Nancy's fried chicken and beat biscuits. When he did make any remarks he addressed them to Solomon rather than to me. Solomon was loquacious enough in general, but he had his own ideas of table decorum, and it was evident that the friendly advances of my guest considerably scandalized him. When the coffee and cigars were brought on, Terry appeared to be on the point of inviting Solomon to sit down and have a cigar with us; but he thought better of it, and contented himself with talking to the old man across my shoulder. He confined his questions to matters concerning the household and the farm, and Solomon in vain endeavored to confine his replies to "yes, sah," "no, sah," "jes' so, sah!" In five minutes he was well started, and it would have required a flood-gate to stop him.

In the midst of it Terry rose and dismissing me with a brief, "I'll join you in the library later; I want to talk to Solomon a few minutes," he bowed me out and shut the door.

I was amused rather than annoyed by this summary dismissal. Terry had been in the house not quite two hours, and I am sure that a third person, looking on, would have picked me out for the stranger. Terry's way of being at home in any surroundings was absolutely inimitable. Had he ever had occasion to visit Windsor Castle I am sure that he would have set about immediately making King Edward feel at home.

He appeared in the library in the course of half an hour with the apology: "I hope you didn't mind being turned out. Servants are sometimes embarrassed, you know, about telling the truth before any of the family."

"You didn't get much truth out of Solomon," I retorted.

"I don't know that I did," Terry admitted with a laugh. "There are the elements of a good reporter in Solomon; he has an imagination which I respect. The Gaylords appear to be an interesting family with hereditary tempers. The ghost, I hear, beat a slave to death, and to pay for it is doomed to pace the laurel walk till the day of judgment."

"That's the story," I nodded, "and the beating is at least authentic."

"H'm!" Terry frowned. "And Solomon tells me tales of the Colonel himself whipping the negroes--there can't be any truth in that?"

"But there is," I said. "He didn't hesitate to strike them when he was angry. I myself saw him beat a nigger a few days ago," and I recounted the story of the chicken thief.

"So! A man of that sort is likely to have enemies he doesn't suspect. How about Cat-Eye Mose? Was Colonel Gaylord in the habit of whipping him?"

"Often," I nodded, "but the more the Colonel abused Mose, the fonder Mose appeared to grow of the Colonel."

"It's a puzzling situation," said Terry pacing up and down the room with a thoughtful frown. "Well!" he exclaimed with a sudden access of energy, "I suppose we might as well sit down and tackle it."

He took off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves; then shoving everything back from one end of the big library table, he settled himself in a chair and motioned me to one opposite.

"Tomorrow morning," he said as he took out from his pockets a roll of newspaper clippings and a yellow copy pad, "we will drive over and have a look at that cave; it ought to tell its own story. But in the meantime--" he looked up with a laugh--"suppose we use our brains a little."

I did not resent the inference. Terry was his old impudent self, and I was so relieved at having him there, assuming the responsibility, that he might have wiped the floor with me and welcome.

"Our object," he commenced, "is not to prove your cousin innocent of the murder, but to find out who is guilty. The most logical method would be to study the scene of the crime first, but as that does not appear feasible until morning, we will examine such data as we have. On the face of it the only two who appear to be implicated are Radnor and this Cat-Eye Mose--who is a most picturesque character," Terry added, the reporter for the moment getting ahead of the detective.

He paused and examined the end of his fountain pen speculatively, and then ran through the pile of clippings before him.

"Well, now, as for Radnor. Suppose we look into his case a little." He glanced over one of the newspaper slips and tossed it across to me.

"There's a clipping from the 'Baltimore Censor'--a tolerably conservative journal. What have you to say in regard to it?"

I picked it up and glanced it over. It was dated May twenty-third--four days after the murder--and was the same in substance as many other articles I had read in the past week.

"No new evidence has come to light in regard to the sensational murder of Colonel Gaylord whose body was discovered in Luray Cave, Virginia, a few days ago. The authorities now concur in the belief that the crime was committed by the son of the murdered man. The accused is awaiting trial in the Kennisburg jail.

"It seems impossible that any man, however depraved, could in cold blood commit so brutal and unnatural a crime as that with which Radnor Gaylord is accused. It is only in the light of his past history that the action can be understood. Coming from one of the oldest families of Virginia, an heir to wealth and an honored name, he is but another example of the many who have sold their birth-right for a mess of pottage. A drunkard and a spendthrift, he wasted his youth in gambling and betting on the races while honest men were toiling for their daily bread.

"Several times has Radnor Gaylord been disinherited and turned adrift, but Colonel Gaylord, weak in his love for his youngest son, invariably received him back again into the house he had dishonored. Finally, pressed beyond the point of endurance, the old man took a firm stand and refused to meet his son's inordinate demands for money. Young Gaylord, rendered desperate by debts, took the most obvious method of gaining his inheritance. His part in the tragedy of Colonel Gaylord's death is as good as proved, though he persistently and defiantly denies all knowledge of the crime. No sympathy can be felt for him. The wish of every right-minded man in the country must be that the law will take its course--and that as speedily as possible."

"Well?" said Terry as I finished.

"It's a lie," I cried hotly.

"All of it?"

"Every word of it!"

"Oh, see here," said Terry. "There's no use in your trying to hide things. That account is an exaggeration of course, but it must have some foundation. You told me you weren't afraid of the truth. Just be so kind as to tell it to me, then. Exactly what sort of a fellow is Radnor? I want to know for several reasons."

"Well, he did drink a good deal for a youngster," I admitted, "though never to such an extent as has been reported. Of late he had stopped entirely. As for gambling, the young men around here have got into a bad way of playing for high stakes, but during the past month or so Rad had pulled up in that too. He sometimes backed one of their own horses from the Gaylord stables, but so did the Colonel; it's the regular thing in Virginia. As for his ever having been disinherited, that is a newspaper story, pure and simple. I never heard anything of the sort, and the neighborhood has told me pretty much all there is to know within the last few days."

"His father never turned him out of the house then?"

"Never that I heard of. He did leave home once because his father insulted him, but he came back again."

"That was forgiving," commented Terry. "In general, though, I understand that the relations between the two were rather strained?"

"At times they were," I admitted, "but things had been going rather better for the last few days."

"Until the night before the murder. They quarreled then? And over a matter of money?"

"Yes. Radnor makes no secret of it. He wanted his father to settle something on him, and upon his father's refusal some words passed between them."

"And a French clock," suggested Terry.

I acknowledged the clock and Terry pondered the question with one eye closed meditatively.

"Had Radnor ever asked for anything of the sort before?"

"Not that I know of."

"Why did he ask then?"

"Well, it's rather galling for a man of his age to be dependent on his father for every cent he gets. The Colonel always gave him plenty, but he did not want to take it in that way."

"In just what way did he want to take it?" Terry inquired. "Since he was so infernally independent why didn't he get to work and earn something?"

"Earn something!" I returned sharply. "Rad has managed the whole plantation for the last three years. His father was getting too old for business and if Rad hadn't taken hold, things would have gone to the deuce long ago. All he got as a regular salary was fifty dollars a month; I think it was time he was paid for his services."

"Oh, very well," Terry laughed. "I was merely asking the question. And if you will allow me to go a step further, why did Colonel Gaylord object to settling something on the boy?"

"He wanted to keep him under his thumb. The Colonel liked to rule, and he wished everyone around him to be dependent on his will."

"I see!" said Terry. "Radnor had a real grievance, then, after all--just one thing more on this point. Why did he choose that particular time to make his request? You say he has had practical charge of affairs for the past three years. Why did he not wish to be independent last year? Or why did he not postpone the desire until next year?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"You'll have to ask Radnor that." I had my own suspicions, but I did not wish to drag Polly Mathers's name into the discussion.

Terry watched me a moment without saying anything, and then he too shrugged his shoulders as he turned back to the newspaper clippings.

"I won't go into the matter of Radnor's connection with the ha'nt just now; I should like to consider first his actions on the day of the murder. I have here a report of the testimony taken at the inquest, but it is not so full as I could wish in some particulars. I should like to have you give me the details. First, you say that Radnor and his father did not speak at the breakfast table? How was it when you started?"

"They both appeared to be in pretty good spirits, but I noticed that they avoided each other."

"Very well, tell me exactly what you did after you arrived at Luray."

"We left our horses at the hotel and walked about a mile across the fields to the mouth of the cave. We had lunch in the woods and at about one o'clock we started through the cave. We came out at a little after three, and, I should say, started to drive back about half past four."

"Did you notice Radnor through the day?"

"Not particularly."

"Did you see either him or the Colonel in the cave?"

"Yes, I was with the Colonel most of the time."

"And how about Radnor? Didn't you see him at all?"

"Oh, yes. I remember talking to him once about some queerly shaped stalagmites. He didn't hang around me, naturally, while I was with his father."

"And when you talked to him about the stalagmites--was there anyone else with him at the time?"

"I believe Miss Mathers was there."

"And he was carrying her coat?"

"I didn't notice."

"At least he left it later in what you call the gallery of the broken column?"

"Yes."

"I see," said Terry glancing over the printed report of the inquest, "that the coroner asked at this point if Radnor were in the habit of forgetting young ladies' coats. That's more pertinent than many of the questions he asked. How about it? Was he in the habit of forgetting young ladies' coats?"