"I will tell you nothing," Radnor growled. "I am not giving statements to the press."
"Mr. Gaylord," said Terry, with an assumption of gentle patience, "if you will excuse my referring to what I know must be a painful subject, would you mind telling me if the suspicion has ever crossed your mind that your brother Jefferson may have returned secretly, have abstracted the bonds from the safe, and, two weeks later, quite accidentally, have met Colonel Gaylord alone in the cave—"
Radnor turned upon him in a sudden fury; I thought for a moment he was going to strike him and I sprang forward and caught his arm.
"The Gaylords may be a bad lot but they are not liars and they are not cowards.
They do not run away; they stand by the consequences of their acts."
Terry bowed gravely.
"Just one more question, and I am through.
What happened to you that day in the cave?"
"It's none of your damned business!"
I glanced apprehensively at Terry, uncertain as to how he would take this; but he did not appear to resent it.
He looked Radnor over with an air of interested approval and his smile slowly broadened.
"I'm glad to see you're game," he remarked.
"I tell you I don't know who killed my father any more than you do," Radnor cried. "You needn't come here asking me questions.
Go and find the murderer if you can, and if you can't, hang me and be done with it."
"I don't know that we need take up any more of Mr. Gaylord's time," said Terry to me. "I've found out about all I wished to know.
We'll drop in again," he added reassuringly to Radnor. "Good afternoon."
As we went out of the door he turned back a moment and added with a slightly sharp undertone in his voice:
"And the next time I come, Gaylord, you'll shake hands!" Fumbling in his pocket he drew out my telegram from the police commissioner, and tossed it onto the cot. "In the meantime there's something for you to think about.
Good by."
"Do you mean," I asked as we climbed back into the carriage, "that Radnor did believe Jeff guilty?"
"Well, not exactly.
I fancy he will be relieved, though, to find that Jeff was three thousand miles away when the murder was committed."
Only once during the drive home did Terry exhibit any interest in his surroundings, and that was when we passed through the village of Lambert Corners.
He made me slow down to a walk and explain the purpose of everyone of the dozen or so buildings along the square.
At
"Miller's place" he suddenly decided that he needed some stamps and I waited outside while he obtained them together with a drink in the private back room.
"Nothing like getting the lay of the land," he remarked as he climbed back into the carriage. "That Miller is a picturesque old party.
He thinks it's all tommy-rot that Radnor Gaylord had anything to do with the crime—Rad's a customer of his, and it's a downright imposition to lock the boy up where he can't spend money."
For the rest of the drive Terry kept silence and I did not venture to interrupt it.
I had come to have a superstitious feeling that his silences were portentous.
It was not until I stopped to open the gate into our own home lane, that he suddenly burst out with the question:
"Where do the Mathers people live?"
"A couple of miles farther down the pike—they have no connection whatever with the business, and don't know a thing about it."
"Ah—perhaps not.
Would it be too late to drive over to-night?"
"Yes," said I, "it would."
"Oh, very well," said he, good-humoredly. "There'll be time enough in the morning."
I let this pass without comment, but on one thing I was resolved; and that was that Polly Mathers should never fall into Terry's clutches.
"There are a lot of questions I want to ask about your ghost, but I'll wait till I get my bearings—and my dinner," he added with a laugh. "There wasn't any dining car on that train, and I breakfasted early and omitted lunch."
"Here we are," I said, as we came in sight of the house. "The cook is expecting us."
"So that is the Gaylord house is it?
A fine old place!
When was it built?"
"About 1830, I imagine."
"Let me see, Sheridan rode up the Shenandoah Valley and burned everything in sight.
How did this place happen to escape?"
"I don't know just how it did.
You see it's a mile back from the main road and well hidden by trees—I suppose they were in a hurry and it escaped their attention."
"And that row of shanties down there?"
"Are the haunted negro cabins."