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THE FOUR-POOLS MYSTERY
BY
JEAN WEBSTER
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1908
Copyright, 1907, 1908, by
THE CENTURY CO.
Published, _March, 1908_
THE DE VINNE PRESS
[Illustration: In the Cave]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I INTRODUCING TERRY PATTEN 3
II I ARRIVE AT FOUR-POOLS PLANTATION 14
III I MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF THE HA'NT 26
IV THE HA'NT GROWS MYSTERIOUS 39
V CAT-EYE MOSE CREATES A SENSATION 58
VI WE SEND FOR A DETECTIVE 76
VII WE SEND HIM BACK AGAIN 92
VIII THE ROBBERY REMAINS A MYSTERY 108
IX THE EXPEDITION TO LURAY 119
X THE TRAGEDY OF THE CAVE 135
XI THE SHERIFF VISITS FOUR-POOLS 143
XII I MAKE A PROMISE TO POLLY 151
XIII THE INQUEST 168
XIV THE JURY'S VERDICT 186
XV FALSE CLUES 196
XVI TERRY COMES 206
XVII WE SEARCH THE ABANDONED CABINS 222
XVIII TERRY ARRIVES AT A CONCLUSION 247
XIX TERRY FINDS THE BONDS 262
XX POLLY MAKES A CONFESSION 271
XXI MR. TERENCE KIRKWOOD PATTEN OF NEW YORK 285
XXII THE DISCOVERY OF CAT-EYE MOSE 296
XXIII MOSE TELLS HIS STORY 314
XXIV POLLY MAKES A PROPOSAL 329
THE FOUR-POOLS MYSTERY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCING TERRY PATTEN
It was through the Patterson-Pratt forgery case that I first made the
acquaintance of Terry Patten, and at the time I should have been more
than willing to forego the pleasure.
Our firm rarely dealt with criminal cases, but the Patterson family were
long standing clients, and they naturally turned to us when the trouble
came. Ordinarily, so important a matter would have been put in the hands
of one of the older men, but it happened that I was the one who had
drawn up the will for Patterson Senior the night before his suicide,
therefore the brunt of the work devolved upon me. The most unpleasant
part of the whole affair was the notoriety. Could we have kept it from
the papers, it would not have been so bad, but that was a physical
impossibility; Terry Patten was on our track, and within a week he had
brought down upon us every newspaper in New York.
The first I ever heard of Terry, a card was sent in bearing the
inscription, "Mr. Terence K. Patten," and in the lower left-hand corner,
"of the Post-Dispatch." I shuddered as I read it. The Post-Dispatch was
at that time the yellowest of the yellow journals. While I was still
shuddering, Terry walked in through the door the office boy had
inadvertently left open.
He nodded a friendly good morning, helped himself to a chair, tossed his
hat and gloves upon the table, crossed his legs comfortably, and looked
me over. I returned the scrutiny with interest while I was mentally
framing a polite formula for getting rid of him without giving rise to
any ill feeling. I had no desire to annoy unnecessarily any of the
Post-Dispatch's young men.
At first sight my caller did not strike me as unlike a dozen other
reporters. His face was the face one feels he has a right to expect of a
newspaper man--keen, alert, humorous; on the look-out for opportunities.
But with a second glance I commenced to feel interested. I wondered
where he had come from and what he had done in the past. His features
were undeniably Irish; but that which chiefly awakened my curiosity, was
his expression. It was not only wide-awake and intelligent; it was
something more. "Knowing" one would say. It carried with it the mark of
experience, the indelible stamp of the street. He was a man who has had
no childhood, whose education commenced from the cradle.
I did not arrive at all of these conclusions at once, however, for he
had finished his inspection before I had fairly started mine. Apparently
he found me satisfactory. The smile which had been lurking about the
corners of his mouth broadened to a grin, and I commenced wondering
uncomfortably what there was funny about my appearance. Then suddenly
he leaned forward and began talking in a quick, eager way, that required
all my attention to keep abreast of him. After a short preamble in which
he set forth his view of the Patterson-Pratt case--and a clearsighted
view it was--he commenced asking questions. They were such amazingly
impudent questions that they nearly took my breath away. But he asked
them in a manner so engagingly innocent that I found myself answering
them before I was aware of it. There was a confiding air of _bonne
camaraderie_ about the fellow which completely put one off one's guard.
At the end of fifteen minutes he was on the inside track of most of my
affairs, and was giving me advice through a kindly desire to keep me
from getting things in a mess. The situation would have struck me as
ludicrous had I stopped to think of it; but it is a fact I have noted
since, that, with Terry, one does not appreciate situations until it is
too late.
When he had got from me as much information as I possessed, he shook
hands cordially, said he was happy to have made my acquaintance, and
would try to drop in again some day. After he had gone, and I had had
time to review our conversation, I began to grow hot over the matter. I
grew hotter still when I read his report in the paper the next morning.
I could not understand why I had not kicked him out at first sight, and
I sincerely hoped that he would drop in again, that I might avail myself
of the opportunity.
He did drop in, and I received him with the utmost cordiality. There was
something entirely disarming about Terry's impudence. And so it went. He
continued to comment upon the case in the most sensational manner
possible, and I railed against him and forgave him with unvarying
regularity. In the end we came to be quite friendly over the affair. I
found him diverting at a time when I was in need of diversion, though
just what attraction he found in me, I have never been able to fathom.
It was certainly not that he saw a future source of "stories," for he
frankly regarded corporation law as a pursuit devoid of interest.
Criminal law was the one branch of the profession for which he felt any
respect.
We frequently had lunch together; or breakfast, in his case. His day
commenced about noon and lasted till three in the morning. "Well, Terry,
what's the news at the morgue today?" I would inquire as we settled
ourselves at the table. And Terry would rattle off the details of the
latest murder mystery with a cheerfully matter-of-fact air that would
have been disgusting had it not been so funny.
It was at this time that I learned his history prior to the days of the
Post-Dispatch. He was entirely frank about himself, and if one half of
his stories were true, he has achieved some amazing adventures. I
strongly suspected at times that the reporting instinct got ahead of the
facts, and that he embroidered incidents as he went along.
His father, Terry Senior, had been an Irish politician of considerable
ability and some prominence on the East River side of the city. The
boy's early education had been picked up in the streets (his father had
got the truant officer his position) and it was thorough. Later he had
received a more theoretical training in the University of New York, but
I think it was his early education which stuck by him longest, and
which, in the end, was probably the more useful of the two. Armed with
this equipment, it was inevitable that he should develop into a star
reporter. Not only did he write his news in an entertaining form, but he
first made the news he wrote about. When any sensational crime had been
committed which puzzled the police, Terry had an annoying way of solving
the mystery himself, and publishing the full particulars in the
Post-Dispatch with the glory blatantly attributed to "our reporter." The
paper was fully aware that Terence K. Patten was an acquisition to its
staff. It had sent him on various commissions to various entertaining
quarters of the globe, and in the course of his duty he had encountered
experiences. One is forced to admit that he was not always fastidious as
to the rôle he played. He had cruised about the Mediterranean as
assistant cook on a millionaire's yacht, and had listened to secrets
between meals. He had wandered about the country with a monkey and a
hand-organ in search of a peddler he suspected of a crime. He had helped
along a revolution in South America, and had gone up in a captive war
balloon which had broken loose and floated off.
But all this is of no concern at present. I am merely going to chronicle
his achievement in one instance--in what he himself has always referred
to as the "Four-Pools Mystery." It has already been written up in
reporter style as the details came to light from day to day. But a
ten-year-old newspaper story is as dead as if it were written on
parchment, and since the part Terry played was rather remarkable, and
many of the details were at the time suppressed, I think it deserves a
more permanent form.
It was through the Patterson-Pratt business by a roundabout way that I
got mixed up in the Four-Pools affair. I had been working very hard over
the forgery case; I spent every day on it for nine weeks--and nearly
every night. I got into the way of lying awake, puzzling over the
details, when I should have been sleeping, and that is the sort of work
which finishes a man. By the middle of April, when the strain was over,
I was as near being a nervous wreck as an ordinarily healthy chap can
get.
At this stage my doctor stepped in and ordered a rest in some quiet
place out of reach of the New York papers; he suggested a fishing
expedition to Cape Cod. I apathetically fell in with the idea, and
invited Terry to join me. But he jeered at the notion of finding either
pleasure or profit in any such trip. It was too far from the center of
crime to contain any interest for Terry.
"Heavens, man! I'd as lief spend a vacation in the middle of the Sahara
Desert."
"Oh, the fishing would keep things going," I said.
"Fishing! We'd die of ennui before we had a bite. I'd be murdering you
at the end of the first week just for some excitement. If you need a
rest--and you are rather seedy--forget all about this Patterson business
and plunge into something new. The best rest in the world is a
counter-irritant."
This was Terry all over; he himself was utterly devoid of nerves, and he
could not appreciate the part they played in a man of normal make-up. My
being threatened with nervous prostration he regarded as a joke. His
pleasantries rather damped my interest in deep-sea fishing, however, and
I cast about for something else. It was at this juncture that I thought
of Four-Pools Plantation. "Four-Pools" was the somewhat fantastic name
of a stock farm in the Shenandoah Valley, belonging to a great-uncle
whom I had not seen since I was a boy.
A few months before, I had had occasion to settle a little legal matter
for Colonel Gaylord (he was a colonel by courtesy; so far as I could
discover he had never had his hands on a gun except for rabbit shooting)
and in the exchange of amenities which followed, he had given me a
standing invitation to make the plantation my home whenever I should
have occasion to come South. As I had no prospect of leaving New York, I
thought nothing of it at the time; but now I determined to take the old
gentleman at his word, and spend my enforced vacation in getting
acquainted with my Virginia relatives.
This plan struck Terry as just one degree funnier than the fishing
expedition. The doctor, however, received the idea with enthusiasm. A
farm, he said, with plenty of outdoor life and no excitement, was just
the thing I needed. But could he have foreseen the events which were to
happen there, I doubt if he would have recommended the place for a
nervous man.