Rad is at heart as splendid a chap as ever lived, and his friends ought never to have allowed him to go astray."
She looked away without answering, and then in a moment turned back to me and held out her hand.
"Good-by.
When you see him again please tell him what I said."
As she turned away I looked after her, puzzled.
I was sure at last that she was in love with Radnor, and I was equally sure that he did not know it; for in spite of his sorrow at his father's death and of the suspicion that rested on him, I knew that he would not have been so completely crushed had he felt that she was with him.
Why must this come to him now too late to do him any good, when he had needed it so much before?
I felt momentarily enraged at Polly.
It seemed somehow as if the trouble might have been avoided had she been more straightforward.
Then at the memory of her pale face and pleading eyes I relented.
However thoughtless she had been before, she was changed now; this tragedy had somehow made a woman of her over night.
When Radnor came at last to claim her, they would each, perhaps, be worthier of the other.
I returned to the empty house that night and sat down to look the facts squarely in the face.
I had hitherto been so occupied with the necessary preparations for the funeral, and with instituting a search for Cat-Eye Mose, that I had scarcely had time to think, let alone map out any logical plan of action.
Radnor was so stunned by the blow that he could barely talk coherently, and as yet I had had no satisfactory interview with him.
Immediately after the Colonel's death, I had very hastily run over his private papers, but had found little to suggest a clue.
Among some old letters were several from Nannie's husband, written at the time of her sickness and death; their tone was bitter.
Could the man have accomplished a tardy revenge for past insults? I asked myself.
But investigation showed this theory to be most untenable.
He was still living in the little Kansas village where she had died, had married again, and become a peaceful plodding citizen.
It required all his present energy to support his wife and children—I dare say the brief episode of his first marriage had almost faded from his mind.
There was not the slightest chance that he could be implicated.
I sifted the papers again, thoroughly and painstakingly, but found nothing that would throw any light upon the mystery.
While I was still engaged with this task, a message came from the coroner saying that the formal inquest would begin at ten o'clock the next morning in the Kennisburg court-house.
This gave me no chance to plan any sort of campaign, and I could do little more than let matters take their course.
I hoped however that in the progress of the inquest, some clue would be brought to light which would render Radnor's being remanded for trial impossible.
So far, I had to acknowledge, the evidence against him appeared overwhelming.
A motive was supplied in the fact that the Colonel's death would leave him his own master and a rich man.
The well-known fact of their frequent quarrels, coupled with Radnor's fierce temper and somewhat revengeful disposition, was a very strong point in his disfavor; added to this, the suspicious circumstances of the day of the tragedy—the fact that he was not with the rest of the party when the crime must have been committed, the alleged print of his boots and the finding of the match box, his subsequent perturbed condition—everything pointed to him as the author of the crime.
It was a most convincing chain of circumstantial evidence.
Considering the data that had come to light, there seemed to be only one alternative, and that was that Cat-Eye Mose had committed the murder.
I clung tenaciously to this belief; but I found, in the absence of any further proof or any conceivable motive, that few people shared it with me.
The marks of his bare feet proved conclusively that he had been, in whatever capacity, an active participator in the struggle.
"He was there to aid his master," the sheriff affirmed, "and being a witness to the crime, it was necessary to put him out of the way."
"Why hide the body of one and not the other?" I asked.
"To throw suspicion on Mose."
This was the universal opinion; no one, from the beginning, would listen to a word against Mose.
In his case, as well as in Radnor's, the past was speaking.
Through all his life, they said, he had faithfully loved and served the Colonel, and if necessity required, he would willingly have died for him.
But for myself, I continued to believe in the face of all opposition, that Mose was guilty.
It was more a matter of feeling with me than of reasoning.
I had always been suspicious of the fellow; a man with eyes like that was capable of anything.
The objection which the sheriff raised that Colonel Gaylord was both larger and stronger than Mose and could easily have overcome him, proved nothing to my mind.
Mose was a small man, but he was long-armed and wirey, doubtless far stronger than he looked; besides, he had been armed, and the nature of his weapon was clear.
The floor of the cave was strewn with scores of broken stalactites; nothing could have made a more formidable weapon than one of these long pieces of jagged stone used as a club.
As to the motive for the crime, who could tell what went on in the slow workings of his mind?
The Colonel had struck him more than once—unjustly, I did not doubt—and though he seemed at the moment to take it meekly, might he not have been merely biding his time?
His final revenge may have been the outcome of many hoarded grievances that no one knew existed.
The fellow was more than half insane.
What more likely than that he had attacked his master in a fit of animal passion; and then, terrified at the result, escaped to the woods?