"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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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