THE ROBBERY REMAINS A MYSTERY
So we got rid of the detective. But matters did not readily settle down
again into their old relations. The Colonel was irritable, and Rad was
moody and sullen. He showed no tendency to confide in me as to the truth
about the ha'nt, and I did not probe the matter further. In a day or so
he brought me three hundred dollars, to cover the amount I had loaned
him, together with the "blackmail," as he insisted upon calling it. The
money, he informed me, was from the proceeds of the bonds he had sold.
He showed me at the same time several letters from his brokers
establishing beyond a doubt that the story he had told was true. As to
the stolen bonds, their whereabouts was as much a mystery as ever, and
Rad appeared to take not the slightest interest in the matter. Since the
detective had been summoned, he had washed his hands of all
responsibility.
I think it was the morning after Clancy's departure that Solomon handed
me a pale blue envelope bearing in the upper left-hand corner the device
of the Post-Dispatch. I laughed as I ripped it open; I had almost
forgotten Terry's existence. It contained a characteristic pencil scrawl
slanting across a sheet of yellow copy paper.
"Arnold Crosby, Esq.
"Turnips Farm, Pumpkin Corners, Va.
"_Dear Sir_:
"Enclosed please find clipping. Are the facts straight and have the
missing bonds turned up? If not, don't you want me to run down and
find them for you? Should like to meet an authenticated ghost.
Wouldn't be a bad Sunday feature article. Give it my love. Is it a
man or lady? Things are also moving nicely in New York--two murders
and a child abducted in one week.
"How are crops?
"Yours truly,
"T. P.
"Wire me if you want me."
The clipping was headed, "Spook Cracks Safe," and was a fairly accurate
account of the ha'nt and the robbery. It ended with the remark that the
mystery was as yet unsolved, but that the best detective talent in the
country had been engaged on the case.
I tossed the letter to Radnor with a laugh; he had already heard of
Terry's connection with the Patterson-Pratt affair.
"Perhaps we couldn't do better than to get him down," I suggested; "he's
most abnormally keen at ferreting out a mystery that promises any
news--if any one can learn the truth about those bonds, he can."
"I don't want to know the truth," Radnor growled. "I'm sick of the very
name of bonds."
And this had been his attitude from the moment the detective left. My
own insistence that it was our duty to track down the thief met with
nothing but a shrug. Another person might have suspected that this
apathy only proved his own culpability in the theft, but such a
suspicion never for a moment crossed my mind. He was, as he said, sick
of the very name of bonds, and with a person of his temperament that
ended the matter. Though I did not comprehend his attitude, still I took
him at his word. There was something about Rad's straightforward way of
looking one in the eye that impelled belief. As I had heard the Colonel
boast, a Gaylord could not tell a lie.
The things a Gaylord could and could not do, were, I acknowledge, to a
Northern ethical sense a trifle mystifying. A Gaylord might drink and
gamble and fail to pay his debts (not his gambling debts; his tailor and
his grocer); he might be the hero of many doubtful affairs with women;
he might in a sudden fit of passion commit a murder--there was more than
one killing in the family annals--but under no circumstances would his
"honah" permit him to tell a lie. The reservation struck me somewhat
humorously as an anti-climax. But nevertheless I believed it. When Rad
said he knew nothing of the stolen bonds I dismissed the possibility
from my mind.
Though I was relieved to feel that he was not guilty, still I was
worried and nervous over the matter. I felt that it was criminal not to
do something, and yet my hands were tied. I could scarcely undertake an
investigation myself, for every clue led across the trail of the ha'nt,
and that, Rad made it clear, was forbidden ground. The Colonel,
meanwhile, was comparatively quiet, as he supposed the detective was
still working on the case. I accordingly did nothing, but I kept my eyes
open, hoping that something would turn up.
Rad's temper was absolutely unbearable for the first week after the
detective left. The reason had nothing to do with the stolen bonds, but
was concerned entirely with Polly Mathers's behavior. She barely noticed
Rad's existence, so occupied was she with the ecstatic young sheriff.
What the trouble was, I did not know, but I suspected that it was the
whispered conjectures in regard to the ha'nt.
I remember one evening in particular that she snubbed him in the face of
the entire neighborhood. We had arrived at a party a trifle late to
find Polly as usual the center of a laughing group of young men, all
clamoring for dances. They widened their circle to admit Rad in a way
which tacitly acknowledged his prior claim. He inquired with his most
deferential bow what dances she had saved for him. Polly replied in an
off-hand manner that she was sorry but her card was already full. Rad
shrugged nonchalantly, and sauntering toward the door, disappeared for
the rest of the night. When he turned up at Four-Pools early in the
morning, his horse, Uncle Jake informed me, looked as if it had been
ridden by "de debbil hisself."
With Radnor in this state, and the Colonel growing daily more irritable
over the continued mystery of the bonds, it is not strange that matters
between them were at a high state of tension. As I saw more of the
Colonel's treatment of Rad, I came to realize that there was
considerable excuse for Jefferson's wildness. While he was a kind man at
heart, still he had an ungovernable temper, and an absolutely tyrannical
desire to rule every one about him. His was the only free will allowed
on the place. He attempted to treat Rad at twenty-two much as he had
done at twelve. A few months before my arrival (I heard this later) he
had even struck him, whereupon Radnor had turned on his heel and walked
out of the house, and had only consented to come back two weeks later
when he heard that the old man was ill. If two men ever needed a woman
to manage them, these were the two. I think that if my aunt had lived,
most of the trouble would have been avoided.
Rad was not the only one, however, who felt the Colonel's irritation
over the robbery. His treatment of the servants was harsh and even
cruel. Everybody on the place went about in a half-cowed fashion. He
treated Mose like a dog. Why the fellow stood it, I don't know. The
Colonel seemed never to have learned that the old slave days were over
and that he no longer owned the negroes body and soul. His government of
the plantation was in the manner of a despot. Everybody--from his own
son to the merest pickaninny--was at the mercy of his caprice. When he
was in good humor, he was kindness itself to the darkies; when he was in
bad humor, he vented his anger on whoever happened to be nearest.
I shall never forget the feeling of indignation with which I first saw
him strike a man. A strange negro was caught one morning in the
neighborhood of the chicken coop, and was brought up to the house by two
of the stable-men. My uncle, who was standing on the portico steps
waiting for his horse, was in a particularly savage mood, as he had just
come from an altercation with Radnor. The man said that he was hungry
and asked for work. But the Colonel, almost without waiting to hear him
speak, fell upon him in a fit of blind rage, slashing him half a dozen
times over the head and shoulders with his heavy riding crop. The negro,
who was a powerfully built fellow, instead of standing up and defending
himself like a man, crouched on the ground with his arms over his head.
"Please, Cunnel Gaylord," he whimpered, "le' me go! I ain't done nuffen.
I ain't steal no chickens. For Gord's sake, doan whip me!"
I sprang forward with an angry exclamation and grasped my uncle's arm.
The fellow was on his feet instantly and off down the lane without once
glancing back. The Colonel stood a moment looking from my indignant face
to the man disappearing in the distance, and burst out laughing.
"I reckon I won't be troubled with _him_ any more," he remarked as he
mounted and rode away, his good humor apparently quite restored.
I confess that it took me some time to get over that scene. But the
worst of it was that he treated his own servants in the same summary
fashion. The thing that puzzled me most was the way in which they
received it. Mose, being always at hand, was cuffed about more than any
negro on the place, but as far as I could make out, it only seemed to
increase his love and veneration for the Colonel. I don't believe the
situation could ever be intelligible to a Northern man.
So matters stood when I had been a month at Four-Pools. My vacation had
lasted long enough, but I was supremely comfortable and very loath to
go. The first few weeks of May had been, to my starved city eyes, a
dazzling pageant of beauty. The landscape glowed with yellow daffodils,
pink peach blossoms, and the bright green of new wheat; the fields were
alive with the frisky joyousness of spring lambs and colts, turned out
to pasture. It was with a keen feeling of reluctance that I faced the
prospect of New York's brick and stone and asphalt. My work was calling,
but I lazily postponed my departure from day to day.
Things at the plantation seemed to have settled into their old routine.
The whereabouts of the bonds was still a mystery, but the ha'nt had
returned to his grave--at least, in so far as any manifestations
affected the house. I believe that the "sperrit of de spring-hole" had
been seen rising once or twice from a cloud of sulphurous smoke, but the
excitement was confined strictly to the negro quarters. No man on the
place who valued a whole skin would have dared mention the word "ha'nt"
in Colonel Gaylord's presence. Relations between Rad and his father
were rather less strained, and matters on the whole were going
pleasantly enough, when there suddenly fell from a clear sky the strange
and terrible series of events which changed everything at Four-Pools.