WE SEND FOR A DETECTIVE
I slept late the next morning, and came down stairs to find the Colonel
pacing the length of the dining-room, his head bent, a worried frown
upon his brow. He came to a sudden halt at my appearance and regarded me
a moment without speaking. I could see that something of moment had
happened, but I could fathom nothing of its nature from his expression.
"Good morning, Arnold," he said with a certain grim pleasantness. "I
have just been making a discovery. It appears that Mose's ha'nt amounted
to more than we gave him credit for. The safe was robbed during the
night."
"The safe robbed!" I cried. "How much was taken?"
"Something over a hundred dollars in cash, and a number of important
papers."
He threw open the door of the little office, and waved his hand toward
the safe which occupied one end. The two iron doors were wide open, the
interior showing a succession of yawning pigeon holes with the cash
drawer, half pulled out and empty. Several papers were spilled on the
floor underneath.
"He evidently had no use for my will nor for Kennisburg street railway
stock--I don't blame him; it wouldn't sell for the paper it's written
on."
Radnor's step sounded on the stair as he came running down--whistling I
noted.
"Ah--Rad," the Colonel called from the office doorway. "You're a good
sleeper."
Radnor stopped his whistle as his eye fell upon our faces, and his own
took on a look of anxiety.
"What's the matter?" he asked. "Has anything happened?"
"It appears the ha'nt has robbed the safe."
"The ha'nt?" Rad's face went visibly white, and then in a moment it
cleared; his expression was divided between relief and dismay.
"Oh!" he said, "you've missed the money? I meant to get down first and
tell you about it, but overslept. I took a hundred dollars out of the
safe last night because I wanted the cash--you had gone to bed so I
didn't say anything about it. I will ride into the village this morning
and get it out of the bank in time to pay the men."
"You took a hundred dollars," the Colonel repeated. "And did you take
the securities also and the bag of coin?" He waved his hand toward the
safe. Radnor's eye followed and his jaw dropped.
"I didn't touch anything but the roll of bills in the cash drawer.
What's missing?"
"Five thousand dollars in bonds, a couple of insurance policies and one
or two deeds--also the bag of coin. Mose saw the ha'nt in the night, and
Arnold and I came down to investigate; we unfortunately neglected the
office in our search, or we might have cornered him. Do you happen to
remember whether or not you closed the safe after you took out the
money, and would you mind telling me why you needed a hundred dollars in
such a hurry that you couldn't wait until the bank opened?"
The troubled line on Radnor's brow deepened.
"I think I closed the safe," he said, "but I don't remember. It's barely
possible that I didn't lock it; you know we haven't always kept it
locked, especially when there wasn't money in it.--It never occurred to
me that anyone would steal the bonds. I can't imagine what it means."
"You haven't answered my question.--Why did you need a hundred dollars
in cash after ten o'clock last night?"
"I am sorry, father, but I can't answer that question. It's a private
matter."
"Indeed! You are sure that you did not take the bonds as well and have
forgotten it?"
"I took one hundred dollars in bills and nothing else. I took that
merely because it was my only way of cashing a check. I have frequently
cashed my private checks, when we had a surplus on hand and I didn't
want the bother of going in to the bank. So long as I balance the books
all right, I see no reason why I should not do so."
"H'm!" said the Colonel. "Two days ago you came to me and wanted two
months' pay in advance because you had overdrawn your bank account, and
I refused to give it to you. Where, may I ask, were you intending to get
the hundred dollars to pay back this amount?"
A quick flush spread over Radnor's face.
"I already had it--Arnold will tell you that, for I borrowed it of him."
"Certainly," I put in pacifically--"that's all settled between Rad and
me. I have his note and was glad to accommodate him."
"Don't you get enough from me, that you must ask the guests in my house
to supply you with money?"
Radnor's flush deepened but he said nothing. I could see by his eyes
however that he would not stand much more.
"Then after you had helped yourself to the money, the bonds were stolen
by someone else?" said the Colonel.
"So it appears," said Radnor.
"And have you any theory as to the identity of the thief?"
Rad hesitated a visible instant before replying. The flush left his face
and the pallor came back, but in the end he raised his eyes and answered
steadily.
"No, father, I have not. I am as much mystified as you are."
"And you heard nothing in the night? As I said before, you are an
excellent sleeper!"
Rad caught an ironical undertone in his father's voice.
"I don't understand," he said.
"I am a trifle deaf myself, but still he wakened me.--It's strange that
you should be the only one in the house who could sleep through it."
"Sleep through what? I don't know what you're talking about."
I cut in hastily and explained our adventure with Mose's ha'nt.
Radnor listened with troubled eyes but made no comment at the end. His
father was watching him keenly, and I don't know whether it was
intuition or some knowledge of the truth that made him suddenly put the
question:
"You were of course in the house all night?"
"No," Radnor returned, "I was not. I didn't get in till early this
morning and I suppose the excitement occurred during my absence."
"I suppose I may not be permitted to inquire where you spent the
night--that too is a private matter?"
"Yes," said Radnor, easily, "that too is a private matter."
"And would throw no light on the robbery?"
"None whatever."
Solomon brought in the breakfast and we three sat down, but not to a
very cheerful meal. The Colonel wore an angry frown and Rad an air of
anxious perplexity. Neither of them indulged in any unnecessary
conversation. I knew that the Colonel was more upset by his son's
reticence than by the robbery of the bonds, and that it was my presence
alone which restrained him from giving vent to his anger. As we rose
from the table he said stiffly:
"Well, Rad, have you any suggestion as to how we shall set to work to
track down the thief?"
Radnor slowly shook his head.
"I shall have to talk with Mose first and find out what he really saw."
"Mose!" The Colonel laughed shortly. "He's like all the rest of the
niggers. He doesn't know what he saw--No sir! I've had enough of this
ha'nt business; it's one thing when he spirits chickens from the oven,
it's another when he takes to spiriting securities from the safe. I
shall telegraph to Washington for a first class detective."
"If you take my advice," said Rad, "you'll not do that. A detective's
not much good outside the covers of a book. He'll stir up a lot of
notoriety and present a bill; and you'll be no wiser than you were
before."
"Whoever stole those bonds will be marketing them within a few days; the
interest falls due the first of May. I am not so rich that I can let
five thousand dollars go without a move to get it back. I shall
telegraph today for a detective."
"Just as you please," said Radnor with a shrug, and he turned toward the
door that opened on the gallery. Mose was visible at the end evidently
recounting to an excited audience his experiences of the night. Rad
beckoned to him and the two turned together across the lawn toward the
laurel walk.
It was an hour or so later that Rad presented himself at my door. His
colloquy with Mose had increased rather than lessened the mystified look
on his face. He waited for no preliminaries this time, but plunged
immediately into the matter that was on his mind.
"Arnold, for heaven's sake, stop my father from getting a detective down
here. I don't dare say anything, for my opposition will only make him do
it the more. But you have some influence with him; tell him you're a
lawyer, and will take charge of it yourself."
"Why don't you want a detective?" I asked.
"Good Lord, hasn't our family had notoriety enough? Here's Nan eloping
with the overseer, and Jeff the scandal of the county for five years. I
can't turn around but some malicious interpretation is put on it, and
now that the family ghost has taken to cracking safes gossip will never
stop. Get a detective down here who goes nosing about the neighborhood
in search of information and there's no telling where the thing will
end. Those bonds can't be far. Aren't we more likely to get at the
truth, if we lie low and don't let on we're after the thief?"
"Radnor," I said, "will you tell me the absolute truth? Have you any
suspicion as to who took those securities? Do you know any facts which
might lead to the apprehension of the thief?"
He remained silent a moment, then he parried my question with another.
"What time did all that row occur in the night?"
"I don't know; I didn't think to look, but I should say it was somewhere
in the neighborhood of three o'clock. I didn't go to sleep again, and it
was about half an hour later that you drove in."
"You heard me?"
"I heard you go and I heard you come; but I did not mention that fact
to the Colonel."
Rad laughed shortly.
"I can at least prove an alibi," he said. "You can swear that I was not
Mose's devil."
He remained silent a moment with his elbows on his knees and his chin in
his hands studying the floor; then he raised his eyes to mine with a
puzzled shake of the head.
"No, Arnold, I haven't the slightest suspicion as to who took those
securities. I can't make it out. The robbery must have occurred while I
was away. Of course the deeds and insurance policies and coin may have
been taken as a blind; but it's queer. The money was in five and ten
cent pieces and pennies--we always keep a lot of change on hand to pay
the piece-workers during planting season. There was nearly a quart of it
altogether and it must have weighed a ton. I can't imagine anyone
stealing Government four-per-cents and pennies at the same haul."
"Did you get any light from Mose?" I asked.
"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.
I reined in before "Miller's place," a spacious structure comprising a
general store on the right, the post and telegraph office on the left,
and in the rear a commodious room where a white man may quench his
thirst. A negro must pass on to "Jake's place," two doors below. A
number of horses were tied to the iron railing in front and among them I
recognized Red Pepper. I found the Colonel in the back room, a glass of
mint julep at his elbow, an interested audience before him. He was
engaged in recounting the story of the missing bonds, and it was too
late for me to interrupt. He referred in the most casual manner to the
hundred dollars his son had taken from the safe the night before, a
fortunate circumstance, he added, or that too would have been stolen.
There was not the slightest suggestion in his tone that he and his son
had had any words over this same hundred dollars. The Gaylord pride
could be depended on for hiding from the world what the world had no
business in knowing.
The telegram to the detective agency, I found, had already been
dispatched, and the Colonel was awaiting his answer. It came in a few
moments and was delivered by word of mouth, the clerk seeing no reason
why he should put himself to the trouble of writing it out.
"They say they'll put one o' their best men on the case, Colonel, an'
he'll get to the Junction at five-forty tonight."
The Colonel and I rode home together, he in a more placable frame of
mind. Though I dare say he disliked as much as ever the idea of losing
his bonds, still the éclat of a robbery, of a magnitude that demanded a
detective, was something of a palliative. It was not everyone of his
listeners who had five thousand dollars in bonds to lose. I knew that it
would be useless to try to head off the detective now, and I wisely kept
silent. My mind was by no means at rest however; for an unknown reason I
did not want a detective any more than Radnor. I had the intangible
feeling that there was something in the air which might better not be
discovered.