The Four Pools Mystery, Jean Webster [digital ebook reader txt] 📗

reins and one of the men remarked:

"I reckon young Gaylord got home in good time. He was in an almighty hurry when he started. He didn't stop for no farewells."

With numerous interruptions and humorous interpolations, they finally managed to tell me in their exasperatingly slow drawl that Rad had come back to the hotel that afternoon before the rest of the party, had drunk two glasses of brandy, called for his horse, and galloped off without speaking a word to anyone except to swear at the stable boy. The speaker finished with the assertion that in his opinion Rad Gaylord and Jeff Gaylord were cut out of the same block.

I shifted my seat uneasily. This information did not tend to throw any light on the question of the Colonel's whereabouts, and I was in no mood just then to listen to any more gossip about Rad.

"I'm not looking for young Gaylord," I said shortly. "I know where he is. It's the Colonel I'm after. Neither he nor Cat-Eye Mose have come back, and I'm afraid they're lost in the cave."

The men laughed at this. People didn't get lost in the cave, they said. All anyone had to do was to follow the path; and besides, if the Colonel was with Mose he couldn't get lost if he tried. Mose knew the cave so well that he could find his way around it in the dark. Colonel Gaylord had probably met some friends in the village and driven home with them.

But I would not be satisfied with an explanation of that sort. The Colonel, I knew, was not in the habit of abandoning horses in any such casual manner; and even supposing he had gone home with some friends, he would scarcely have taken Mose along.

I dismounted, turned my horse over to the stable boy, and announced that the cave must be searched. This request was received with some amusement. The idea of getting out a search party for Cat-Eye Mose struck them as peculiarly ludicrous. But I insisted, and finally one of the men who was in the habit of acting as guide, took his feet down from the veranda railing with a grunt of disapproval and shambled into the house after some candles and a lantern. Two or three of the others joined the expedition after a good deal of chaffing at my expense.

We set out for the mouth of the cave by a short cut that led across the fields. It was quite dark by this time, and as there was no moon our one lantern did not go far toward lighting the path. We stumbled along over plowed ground and through swampy pastures to the music of croaking frogs and whip-poor-wills. At first the way was enlivened by humorous suggestions on the part of my companions as to what had become of Colonel Gaylord, but as I did not respond very freely to their bantering, they finally fell silent with only an occasional imprecation as someone stubbed his toe or caught his clothing on a brier. After a half hour or so of plodding we came to a clear path through the woods and in a few minutes reached the mouth of the cave.

A rough little shanty was built over the entrance. It was closed by a ramshackle door which a child could have opened without any difficulty; there was at least no danger of the Colonel's having been locked inside. Lighting our candles, we descended the rough stone staircase into the first great vault, which forms a sort of vestibule to the caverns. With our hands to our mouths we hallooed several times and then held our breath while we waited for an answer. The only sound which came out of the stillness was the occasional drip of water or the flap of a bat's wing. Had the Colonel been lost in any of the winding passages he must have heard us and replied, for the slightest sound is audible in such a cavern, echoing and re-echoing as it does through countless vaulted galleries. The silence, however, instead of assuring me that he was not there only increased my uneasiness. What if he had slipped on the wet clay, and having injured himself, was lying unconscious in the darkness?

The men wished to turn back, but I insisted that we go as far as the broken column which lies in a little gallery above Crystal Lake. That was the place where the coat had been left, and we could at least find out if either the Colonel or Mose had returned for it. We set out in single file along the damp clay path, the light from our few candles only serving to intensify the blackness around us. The huge white forms of the stalactites seemed to follow us like ghosts in the gloom; every now and then a bat flapped past our faces, and I wondered with a shiver how anyone could get up courage to go alone into such a hole as that.

"Crystal Lake" is a shallow pool lying in a sort of bowl. On the farther side the path runs up seven or eight feet above the water along the broken edge of a cliff. A few steps beyond the pool the path diverges sharply to the left and opens into the little gallery of the broken column.

Just as we were about to ascend the two or three stone steps leading to the incline, the guide in front stopped short, and clutching me by the arm pointed a shaking forefinger toward the pool.

"What's that?" he gasped.

I strained my eyes into the darkness but I could see nothing.

"There, that black thing under the bank," he said, raising his candle and throwing the light over the water.

We all saw it now and recognized it with a thrill of horror. It was the body of Colonel Gaylord. He was lying on his face at the bottom of the pool, and with outstretched arms was clutching the mud in his hands. The still water above him was as clear as crystal but was tinged with red.

"It's my uncle!" I cried, springing forward. "He's fallen over the bank. He may not be dead."

But they held me back.

"He's as dead as he ever will be," the guide said grimly. "An' what's more, Colonel Gaylord warn't the man to drown in three foot o' water without making a struggle. This ain't no accident. It's murder! We must go back an' get the coroner. It's agen the law to touch the body until he comes."

It went to my heart to leave the old man lying there at the bottom of that pool, but I could not prevail on one of them to help me move him. The coroner must be brought, they stubbornly insisted, and they restrained me forcibly when I would have waded into the water. We turned back with shaking knees and hurried toward the mouth of the cave, slipping and sliding in the wet clay as we ran. I, for one, felt as though a dozen assassins were following our footsteps in the dark. And all the time I had a sickening feeling that my uncle's death only foreshadowed a more terrible tragedy. The guide's: "This ain't no accident; it's murder," kept running in my head, and much as I tried to drive the thought from me, a horrible suspicion came creeping to my mind that I knew who the murderer must be.

CHAPTER XI THE SHERIFF VISITS FOUR-POOLS

We found the coroner and told our story. He sent word to Kennisburg, the county-seat, for the sheriff to come; and then having called a doctor and three or four other witnesses, we set out again for the cave. The news of the tragedy had spread like wild-fire, and half the town of Luray would have accompanied us had the coroner not forcibly prevented it. He stationed two men at the entrance of the cave to keep the crowd from pushing in. I myself should have been more than willing to wait outside, but I felt that it was my duty by Radnor to be present. If any discoveries were made I wished to be the first to know it.

It was sad business and I will not dwell upon it. One side of the old man's head had been fractured by a heavy blow. He had been dead several hours when we found him, but the doctor could not be certain whether drowning, or the injury he had sustained, had been the immediate cause of death. Dangling from a jagged piece of rock half way down the cliff, we found Polly Mathers's coat, torn and drabbled with mud. The clay path above the pool was trampled in every direction 'way out to the brink of the precipice; it was evident, even to the most untrained observer, that a fierce struggle of some sort had taken place. I was the first one to examine the marks, and as I knelt down and held the light to the ground, I saw with a thrill of mingled horror and hope that one pair of feet had been bare. Mose had taken part in the struggle, and dreadful as was the assurance, it was infinitely better than that other suspicion.

"It was Mose who committed the murder!" I cried to the coroner as I pointed to the foot-prints in the clay.

He bent over beside me and examined the marks.

"Ah——Mose was present," he said slowly, "but so was someone else. See, here is the print of the Colonel's boot and there beside it is the print of another boot; it is fully an inch broader."

But it was difficult to make out anything clearly, so trampled was the path. Our whole party had passed over the very spot not an hour before the tragedy. Whatever the others could see, I, myself, was blind to everything but the indisputable fact that Mose had been there.

As we were making ready to start back to the mouth of the cave, a cry from one of the men called our attention again to the scene of the struggle. He held up in his hand a small, gleaming object which he had found trodden into the path. It was a silver match box covered with dents and mud and marked "R. F. G." I recognized it instantly; I had seen Radnor take it from his pocket a hundred times. As I looked at it now my hope seemed to vanish and that same sickening suspicion rushed over me again. The men eyed each other silently, and I did not have to ask what they were thinking of. We turned without comments and started on our journey back to the village. The body was carried to the hotel to await the coroner's permission to take it home to Four-Pools. There was nothing more for me to do, and with a heavy heart I mounted again to return to the plantation.

Scarcely had I left the stable yard when I heard hoofs pounding along behind me in the darkness, and Jim Mattison galloped up with two of his men.

"If you are going to Four-Pools we will ride with you," he said, falling into pace beside me while the officers dropped behind. "I might as well tell you," he added, "that it looks black for Radnor. I'm sorry, but it's my duty to keep him under arrest until some pretty strong counter-evidence turns up."

"Where's Cat-Eye Mose?" I cried. "Why don't you arrest him?"

The sheriff made a gesture of disdain.

"That's nonsense. Everyone in the county knows Cat-Eye Mose. He wouldn't hurt a fly. If he was present at the time of the crime it was to help his master, and the man who killed Colonel Gaylord killed