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.