“My dear, I am sorry if I have told you anything that distresses you,” said Viola gently. “But I thought—”
“Oh, yes, it is best to know,” was the low response. “Only—only I was so happy a little while ago, and now—”
“But perhaps it may all be explained!” interrupted Viola. “It is only some tiresome business deal, I'm sure. I never could understand them, and I don't want to. But it does seem queer that there is no record of that fifteen thousand dollars being paid back.”
“What does Captain Poland say about it?”
“Oh, he told Harry, very frankly, that father paid the money, and that the receipt was sent to Mr. Blossom. But the latter says it can not be found.”
“And do you suspect Mr. Blossom?” asked Minnie, and her voice held a challenge.
“Well,” answered Viola slowly, “there isn't much of which to suspect him. It isn't as if Captain Poland claimed to have paid father the fifteen thousand dollars, and the money couldn't be found. It's only a receipt for money which the captain admits having gotten back that is missing. But it makes such confusion. And there are so many other things involved—”
“You mean about the poisoning?”
“Yes. Oh, I wish it were all cleared up! Don't let's talk of it. I must find out about Mr. Blossom going away. We shall have to get some one in his place. Aunt Mary will be so disturbed—”
“Don't say that I told you!” cautioned Minnie. “Perhaps I should not have mentioned it. Oh, dear, I am so miserable!” And she certainly looked it.
“And so am I!” confessed Viola. “If only Harry would tell what he is keeping back.”
“You mean about that quarrel with your father?”
“Yes. And he acts so strangely of late, and looks at me in such a queer way. Oh, I'm afraid, and I don't know what I'm afraid of!”
“I'm the same way, Viola!” admitted Minnie.
“I wonder why we two should have all the trouble in the world?”
And the two were miserable together.
They were not the only ones to suffer in those days. Captain Gerry Poland could not drive Viola from his mind. To the yachtsman, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met, and he wondered if fortune would ever make it possible for him to approach her again on the subject that lay so close to his heart.
And then there was Bartlett. It was true he walked the streets—or rather rode around them in his “Spanish Omelet”—a free man; yet the finger of suspicion was constantly pointed at him.
More than once in the town he met people who sneered openly at him, as if to say, “You are guilty, but we can't prove it.” And once on the golf course he went up to three men who had formerly been quite friendly and suggested a game of golf, upon which one after another the others made trivial excuses and begged to be excused. Upon this occasion the young man had rushed away, his face scarlet, and he had only calmed down after a mad tour of many miles in his racing machine.
“It's an outrage!” he had muttered to himself. “A dastardly outrage! But what is a fellow going to do?”
Meanwhile Colonel Ashley and Jack Young were puzzling their heads over many matters connected with the golf course mystery. Jack had obeyed the colonel's instructions to the letter. He had played many rounds on the links and had gotten to a certain degree of friendship with Jean Forette. He had even formed a liking for Bruce Garrigan, who, offhand, informed him that the amount of India ink used in tattooing sailors during the past year was less by fifteen hundred ounces than the total output of radium salts for 1916, while the wheat crop of Minnesota for the same period was 66,255 bushels. All of which information, useful in a way, no doubt, was accepted by Jack with a smile. He was there to look and listen, and, well, he did it.
“But I've got to pass it up,” he told Colonel Ashley. “I've stuck to that Jean chap until I guess he must think I want him for a chauffeur if ever I'm able to own a car bigger than a flivver. And aside from the fact that he does use some kind of dope, in which he isn't alone in this world, I can't get a line on him.”
“No, I didn't expect you would,” said Colonel Ashley, with a smile. “But are you well enough acquainted with him to have a talk with his sweetheart?”
“You mean Mazi?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I s'pose I might get a talk with her. But what's the idea?”
“Nothing special, only I'd like to see if she tells you the same story she told me. Have a try at it when you get a chance.”
“On the theory, I suppose, of in any trouble, look for the lady?”
“Somewhat, yes.”
They were talking in The Haven, for Jack had been put up there as a guest at the request of Colonel Ashley. And when the bell rang, indicating some one at the door, they looked at one another questioningly.
Then came the postman's whistle, for Lakeside, though but a summer resort, with a population much larger in summer than in winter, boasted of mail delivery.
A maid placed the letters in their usual place on the hall table, and the colonel quickly ran through them, for he had reports sent him from his New York office from time to time.
“Here's one for you, Jack,” he announced, handing his assistant a letter.
While Jack Young was reading it the colonel caught sight of a postal, with the address side down, lying among the other missives. It was a postal which bore several lines of printing, the rest being filled in by a pen, and the import of it was that a certain library book, under the number 58 C. H—161* had been out the full time allowed under the rules, and must either be returned for renewal, or a fine of two cents a day paid, and the recipient was asked to give the matter prompt attention.
The colonel turned the card over. It was addressed to Miss Viola Carwell at The Haven.
“So the book is out on her card,” murmured the detective. “I must look for her copy of 'Poison Plants of New Jersey,' and see if it is like the one I have.”
“Were you speaking to me?” asked Jack, having finished his letter.
“No, but I will now. We've got to get busy on this case, and close it up. I've been too long on it now. Shag is getting impatient.”
“Shag?”
“Yes, he wants me to go fishing.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I'm ready. What are the orders?”
Two busy days on the part of Colonel Ashley and his assistant followed. They went on many mysterious errands and were out once all night. But where they went, what they did or who they saw they told no one.
It was early one evening that Colonel Ashley waited for his assistant in the library of The Haven. Jack had gone out to send a message and was to return soon. And as the colonel waited in the dim light of one electric bulb, much shaded, he saw a figure come stealing to the portieres that separated the library from the hall. Cautiously the figure advanced and looked into the room. A glance seemed to indicate that no one was there, for the colonel was hidden in the depths of a big chair, “slumping,” which was his favorite mode of relaxing.
“I wonder if some one is looking for me?” mused the colonel. “Well, just for fun, I'll play hide and seek. I can disclose myself later.” And so he remained in the chair, hardly breathing the silent figure parted the heavy curtains, within, dropped something white on the floor, and then quickly hurried away, the feet making no sound on the thick carpet of the hall.
“Now,” mused the colonel to himself, “I wonder that is a note for me, or a love missive for one the maids from the butler or the gardener, who too bashful to deliver it in person. I'd better look.”
Without turning on more light the colonel picked up the thing that had fluttered so silently to the floor. It was a scrap of paper, and as he held it under the dimly glowing bulb he saw, scrawled in printed letters:
“Viola Carwell has a poison book.”
“As if I didn't know it!” softly exclaimed the colonel.
And then, as he resumed his comfortable, but not very dignified position, he heard some one coming boldly along the hall, and the voice of Jack asked:
“Are you in here, Colonel?”
“Yes, come in. Did you get a reply?”
“Surely. Your friend must have been waiting for your telegram.”
“I expected he would be. Let me see it,” and the detective read a brief message which said:
“Thomas much better after a long sleep.”
“Ah,” mused the colonel. “I'm very glad Thomas is better.”
“Is Thomas, by any chance, a cat?” asked Jack, who read the telegram the colonel handed him.
“He is—just that—a cat and nothing more. And now, Jack, my friend, I think we're about ready to close in.”
“Close in? Why—”
“Oh, there are a few things I haven't told you yet. Sit down and I'll just go over them. I've been on this case a little longer than you have, and I've done some elimination which you haven't had a chance to do.”
“And you have eliminated all but—”
“Captain Poland and LeGrand Blossom.”
At these words Jack started, and made a motion of silence. They were still in the library, but more lights had been turned on, and the place was brilliant.
“What's the matter?” asked the colonel, quickly. “I thought I heard a noise in the hall,” and Jack stepped to the door and looked out. But either he did not see, or did not want to see, a shrinking figure which quickly crouched down behind a chair not far from the portal.
“Guess I was mistaken,” said Jack. “Anyhow I didn't see anything.” Did he forget that coming out of a light room into a dim hall was not conducive to good seeing? Jack Young ought to have remembered that.
“One of the servants, likely, passing by,” suggested the colonel. “Yes, Jack, I think we must pin it down to either the captain or Blossom.”
“Do you really think Blossom could have done it?”
“He could, of course. The main question is, did he have an object in getting Mr. Carwell out of the way?”
“And did he have?”
“I think he did. I've been trailing him lately, when he didn't suspect it, and I've seen him in some queer situations. I know he needed a lot of money and—well, I'm going to take him into custody as the murderer of Mr. Carwell. I want you to—”
But that was as far as the detective got, for there was a shriek in the hall—a cry of mortal anguish that could only come from a woman—and then, past the library door, rushed a figure in white.
Out and away it rushed, flinging open the front door, speeding down the steps and across the lawn.
“Quick!” cried Colonel Ashley. “Who was that?”
“I don't know!” answered Jack. “Must have been the person I thought I heard in the hall.”
“We must find out who it was!” went on the detective. “You make some inquiries. I'll take after her.”
“Could it have been Miss Viola?”
The question was answered almost as soon as it was asked, for, at that moment, Viola herself came down the front stairs.
“What is it?” she asked the two detectives. “Who cried out like that? Is some one hurt?”
“I don't know,” answered Colonel Ashley. “Mr. Young and I were talking in the library when we heard the scream. Then a woman rushed out.”
“It must have been Minnie Webb!” cried Viola. “She was here a moment ago. The maid told me she was waiting in the parlor, and I was detained upstairs. It must have been Minnie. But why did she scream so?”
Colonel Ashley did not stop to answer.
“Look after things here, Jack!” he called to his assistant. “I'm going to follow her. If ever there was a desperate woman she is.”
And he sped through the darkness after the figure in white.
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