CHAPTER XXII
THE DISCOVERY OF CAT-EYE MOSE
Having lighted our candles, we descended into the cave and set out along the path I now knew so well. When we reached the pool the guide lit a calcium light which threw a fierce white glare over the little body of water and the limestone cliffs, and even penetrated to the stalactite draped roof far above our heads. For a moment we stood blinking our eyes scarcely able to see, so sudden was the change from the semi-darkness of our four flickering candles. Then Terry stepped forward.
"Show me where you found the body and point out the spot where the struggle took place."
He spoke in quick, eager tones, so excited that he almost stuttered. It was not necessary for him to act the part of detective any longer. He had forgotten that he ever was a reporter—he had forgotten almost that he was a human being.
From where we stood we pointed out the place above the pool where the struggle had occurred, the spot under the cliff where the body had lain, and the jagged piece of rock on which we had found the coat. Moser even laid down upon the ground and spread out his arms in the position in which we had discovered the Colonel's body.
"Very well, I see," said Terry. "Now the rest of you stay back there on the boards; I don't want you to make a mark."
He stepped forward carefully to the edge of the water and bent over to examine the soft, yellow clay which formed the border of the pool on the lower side. Instantly he straightened up with a sharp exclamation of surprise.
"Did any negroes come in with you to recover the body?" he asked.
"No," returned the sheriff, "as old man Tompkins said, you couldn't hire a nigger to stick his head in here after the Colonel was found. They say they can hear something wailing around the pool and they think his ghost is haunting it."
"They can hear something wailing, can they?" Terry repeated queerly. "Well I begin to believe they can! What is the meaning of this?" he demanded, facing around at us. "How do you account for these peculiar foot-prints?"
"What prints?" I asked as we all pressed forward.
At the moment the calcium light with a final flare, died out, and we were left again in the flickering candle light which seemed darkness to us now.
"Quick, touch off another calcium!" said Terry, with suppressed impatience. He laid a hand on my shoulder and my arm ached from the tightness of his grip. "There," he said pointing with his finger as the light flared up again. "What do you make of those?"
I bent over and plainly traced the prints of bare feet, going and coming and over-lapping one another, just as an animal would make in pacing a cage. I shivered slightly. It was a terribly uncanny sight.
"Well?" said Terry sharply. The place was beginning to get on his nerves too.
"Terry," I said uneasily, "I never saw them before. I thought I examined everything thoroughly, but I was so excited I suppose—"
"What did you make of them?" he interrupted, whirling about on Mattison who was looking over our shoulders.
"I—I didn't see them," Mattison stammered.
"For heaven's sake, men," said Terry impatiently. "Do you mean they weren't there or you didn't notice them?"
The sheriff and I looked at each other blankly, and neither answered.
Terry stood with his hands in his pockets frowning down at the marks, while the rest of us waited silently, scarcely daring to think. Finally he turned away without saying a word, and, motioning us to keep back, commenced examining the path which led up the incline. He mounted the three stone steps, and with his eyes on the ground, slowly advanced to the spot where the struggle had taken place.
"How tall a man did you say Mose was?" he called down to us.
"Little short fellow—not more than five feet high," returned the sheriff.
Terry took his ruler from his pocket and bent over to study the marks at the scene of the struggle. He straightened up with an air of satisfaction.
"Now I want you men to look carefully at those marks on the lower borders of the pool, and then come up here and look at these. Come along up in single file, please, and keep to the middle of the path."
He spoke in the tone of one giving a demonstration before a kindergarten class. We obeyed him silently and ranged in a row along the boards.
"Come here," he said. "Bend over where you can see. Now look at those marks. Do you see anything different in them from the marks below?"
The sheriff and I gazed intently at the prints of bare feet which marked the entire vicinity of the struggle. We had both examined them more than once before, and we saw nothing now but what had already appeared. We straightened up and shook our heads.
"They're the prints of bare feet," said Mattison, stolidly. "But I don't see that they're any different from any other bare feet."
Terry handed him the ruler.
"Measure them," he said. "Measure this one that's flat on the ground. Now go down and measure one of those prints by the borders of the pool."
Mattison took the ruler and complied. As he bent over the marks on the lower border we could see by the light of his candle the look of astonishment that sprang into his face.
"Well, what do you find?" Terry asked.
"The marks up there are nearly two inches longer and an inch broader."
"Exactly."
"Terry," I said, "you can't blame us for not finding that out. We examined everything when we took away the body, and those marks below were simply not there. Someone has been in since."
"So I conclude. Now, Mattison," he added to the sheriff, "come here and show me the marks of Radnor Gaylord's riding boots."
Mattison returned and pointed out the mark which he had produced at the inquest, but his assurance, I noticed, was somewhat shaken.
"That," said Terry half contemptuously, "is the mark of Colonel Gaylord. You must remember that he was struggling with his assailant. He did not plant his foot squarely every time. Sometimes we have only the heel mark: sometimes only the toe. In this case we have more than the mark of the whole foot. How do I account for it? Simply enough. The Colonel's foot slipped sideways. The mark is, you see, exactly the same in length as the others, but disproportionately broad. At the heel and toe it is smudged, and on the inside where the weight was thrown, it is heavier than on the outside. The thing is easy enough to understand. You ought to have been able to deduce it for yourselves. And besides, how did you account for the fact that there was only one mark? A man engaged in a struggle must have left more than that behind him. No; it is quite clear. At this point on the edge of the bank there was no third person. We are dealing with only two men—Colonel Gaylord and his murderer; and the murderer was bare-footed."
"Mose?" I asked.
"No," said Terry, patiently, "not Mose."
"Then who?"
"That—remains to be seen. I will follow him up and find out where he comes from."
Terry held his candle close to the ground and followed along the path. At the entrance to the little gallery of the broken column it diverged, one part leading into the gallery, and the other into a sort of blind alley at one side. Terry paused at the opening.
"Give me some more calcium light," he called to the guide. "I want to look into this passage. And just hand me some of those boards," he added. "It's very necessary that we keep the marks clear."
The rest of us stood in a huddled group on the one or two boards he had left us and watched him curiously as he made his way down the passage. He paused at the end and examined the ground. We saw him stoop and pick up something. Then he rose quickly with a cry of triumph and came running back to us holding his hands behind him.
"It's just as I suspected," he said, his eyes shining with excitement. "Colonel Gaylord had an enemy he did not know."
"What do you mean?" we asked, crowding around.
"Here's the proof," and he held out towards us a well gnawed ham bone in one hand and a cheese rind in the other. "These were the provisions intended for the church social; the pies, I fancy, have disappeared."
We stared at him a moment in silent wonder. The sheriff was the first to assert himself.
"What have these to do with the crime?" he asked, viewing the trophies with an air of disgust.
"Everything. The man who stole those is the man who robbed the safe and who murdered Colonel Gaylord."
The sheriff uttered a low laugh of incredulity, and the guide and I stared open-mouthed.
"And what's more, I will tell you what he looks like. He is a large, very black negro something over six feet tall. When last seen, he was dressed in a blue and white checked blouse and ragged overalls. His shoes were much the worse for wear, and have since been thrown away. He was bare-footed at the time he committed the crime. In short," Terry added, "he is the chicken thief whom Colonel Gaylord whipped a couple of days before he died," and he briefly repeated the incident I had told him.
"You mean," I asked, "that he was the ha'nt?"
"Yes," said Terry, "he was the second ha'nt. He has been hiding for two or three weeks in the spring-hole at Four-Pools, keeping hidden during the day and coming out at night to prowl around and steal whatever he could lay his hands on. He doubtless deserved punishment, but that fact would not make him the less bitter over the Colonel's beating. When I heard that story, I said to myself, 'there is a man who would be ready for revenge if chance put the opportunity in his way.'"
"But," I expostulated, "how did he happen to be in the cave?"
"As to that I cannot say. After the Colonel's beating he probably did not dare to hang about Four-Pools any longer. He took to the woods and came in this direction; being engaged in petty thieving about the neighborhood, it was necessary to find a hiding place during the daytime and the cave was his most natural refuge. We know that he is not afraid of the dark—the spring-hole at Four-Pools is about as dismal a place as a man could find. He established himself in this passage in order to be near the water. See, here in the corner are drops of candle grease and the remains of a fire. On the day of the Mathers's picnic he doubtless saw the party pass through and recognized Colonel Gaylord. It brought to his mind the thrashing he had received. While he was still brooding over the matter, the Colonel came back alone, and it flashed into the fellow's mind that this was his chance. He may have been afraid at first or he may have hesitated through kindlier motives. At any rate he did not attack the Colonel immediately, but retreated into the passage, and the old man passed him without seeing him and went on into the gallery and got the coat.
"In the meantime, the negro had made up his mind, and as the Colonel came back, he crept along behind him. It is hard to trace the marks, for another bare-footed man has walked over them since. But see, in this place at the edge of the path, there's the mark of a palm, showing where the assassin's hand rested when he crouched on the ground. He sprang upon the old man from the rear and they struggled together over the water—touch off a light, please—you see how the clay is all trampled over on both sides of the path, 'way out to the brink of the pool. There is no second set of marks here to obliterate it; we are dealing with just two people—Colonel Gaylord and his assassin."
Terry bent low and picked up from a crevice what looked like a piece of stone covered with clay.
"Here, you see, is the end of the Colonel's candle. He probably dropped it when the man first sprang, and in the darkness he could not tell who or what had attacked him. In his frenzy to have a light he snatched out his match box—Radnor's box—and that too was dropped in the scuffle.
"Now, even if the original motive of the crime were not robbery but revenge—as I fancy it was—at any rate the murderer, being a tramp and a thief, would have robbed the body. But he did not. Why was that? Because he saw or heard something that frightened him, and what could that have been but Mose running to his master's assistance?"
Terry strode over to the steps which led to the incline, and motioning us to follow, pointed out some marks on the sloping bank at the side of the path.
"See, here are Mose's tracks. He was in such a hurry that he could not wait to come up by the steps; he tried to take a cross cut. He scrambled up the slippery bank so fast that he fell on his hands and knees in this place and slid back. That accounts for those long dragging marks, which none of you appear to have noticed. Mose did his best, but he could not reach his master in time. The murderer seeing—or rather hearing him, for it must have been dark—was seized with sudden fear, and with a convulsive effort he threw the old man against the rock wall here, where his head struck on this broken stalactite. If you look carefully you can see the marks of blood. He then hurled him into the pool and fled."
"It sounds plausible enough," said the sheriff slowly, "but there are one or two points which I'm afraid will not bear examining. Suppose your man did thrown the Colonel into the water and run for it, then what, I should like to know, has become of Cat-Eye Mose?"
"That," said Terry, knitting his brows, "is still a mystery and a fairly deep one. There is something uncommonly strange about those tracks on the lower borders of the pool and I confess they puzzle me. Only one explanation occurs to me now and that is not pleasant to think of. We have some clues to work with however, and we ought not to be long in getting at the truth. If I had had your chance of examining the cave on the day of the crime," he added, "I think I should know."
"You might, and again you might not," said Mattison. "It's easy enough for you fellows to come down here and make up a story about a lot of people you've never seen, but I'll tell you one thing, and that is that you're not so likely to hit the truth as the men who've been brought up in the country. In the first place it comes natural to niggers to be whipped and they don't mind it. In the second place if your tramp did want to take it out on the Colonel why should he be scared by Mose, who was a little bit of a sawed-off cuss that I could lick with one hand tied behind me? You may be able to impress a New York jury with a ham bone and a cheese rind, Mr. Patten, but I can tell you, sir, that a Virginia jury wants witnesses."
"We shall do our best to provide some," said Terry, coolly.
"And perhaps you can tell," added Mattison with the triumphant air of clinching the matter, "what has become of the five thousand dollars in bonds? You can never make me believe that any nigger—"
"Oh, they're back in the safe at Four-Pools. I found 'em this morning in the spring-hole where the man had thrown them away.—Now, gentlemen," he added with a touch of impatience, "I want to try a little experiment before we leave the cave. Will you all please put out your lights? I want to see how dark it really is in here."
We blew out our candles and stood a moment in silence. At first all was black around us, but as our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, we saw that a faint light filtered in from somewhere in the roof above our heads. We could make out the pale blur of the white rock wall on one side and the merest glimmer of the pool below.
"No," Terry began, "he could have seen nothing; he must have—" He broke off suddenly and gripping my arm whispered out, "What's that?"
"Where?" I asked.
"Up there; straight ahead."
I looked up and saw two round eyes which glittered like a wild beast's, staring at us out of the darkness. A cold chill ran up my back and I instinctively huddled closer to the others. For a moment no one spoke and I heard the click of Terry's revolver as he cocked it. Then it suddenly came over me what it was, and I cried out:
"It's Cat-Eye Mose!"
"Good Lord, he can see in the dark! Strike a light, some one," Terry said huskily.
The sheriff struck a match. We lit our candles with trembling hands and pressed forward (in a body) to the spot where the eyes had appeared.
Crouched in a corner of a little recess half way up the irregular wall, we found Mose, shivering with fear and looking down at us with dumb, animal eyes. We had to drag him out by main force. The poor fellow was nearly famished and so weak he could scarcely stand. What little sense he had ever possessed seemed to have left him, and he jabbered in a tongue that was scarcely English.
We bolstered him up with a few drops of whisky from Mattison's flask, and half carried him out into the light. The guide ran ahead to get a carriage, spreading the news as he ran, that Cat-Eye Mose had been found. Half the town of Luray came out to the cave to escort us back, and I think the feeling of regret was general, in that there had not been time enough to collect a brass band.
CHAPTER XXIII
MOSE TELLS HIS STORY
We took Mose back to the hotel, shut out the crowd, and gave him something to eat. He was quite out of his head and it was only by dint of the most patient questioning that we finally got his story. It was, in substance, as Terry had sketched it in the cave.
In obedience to my request, Mose had gone back after the coat, not knowing that the Colonel was before him. Suddenly, as he came near the pool he heard a scream and looked up in time to see a big negro—the one my uncle had struck with his crop—spring upon the Colonel with the cry, "It's my tu'n, now, Cunnel Gaylord. You whup me, an' I'll let you see what it feels like."
The Colonel turned and clinched with his assailant, and in the struggle the light was dropped. Mose, with a cry, ran forward to his master's assistance, but when the negro saw him climbing up the bank he suddenly screamed, and hurling the old man from him, turned and fled.
"The fellow must have taken him for the devil when he saw those eyes, and I don't wonder!" Terry interpolated at this point.
After the Colonel's murder, it seems that Mose, crazed by grief and fear, had watched us carry the body away, and then had stayed by the spot where his master had died. This accounted for the marks on the border of the pool. Knowing all of the intricate passages and hiding places as he did, it had been an easy matter for him to evade the party that had searched for his body. He ate the food the murderer had left, but this being exhausted, he would, I haven't a doubt, have died there himself with the unreasoning faithfulness of a dog.
When he finished his rambling and in some places scarcely intelligible account, we sat for a moment with our eyes upon his face, fascinated by his look. Every bit of repugnance I had ever felt toward him had vanished, and there was left in its place only a sense of pity. Mose's cheeks were hollow, his features sharper than ever, and his face was almost pale. From underneath his straight, black, matted hair his eyes glittered feverishly, and their expression of uncomprehending anguish was pitiful to see. He seemed like a dumb animal that has come into contact with death for the first time and asks the reason.
Terry took his eyes from Mose's face and looked down at the table with a set jaw. I do not think that he was deriving as much pleasure from the sight as he had expected. We all of us experienced a feeling of relief when the doctor appeared at the door. We turned Mose over to him with instructions to do what he could for the poor fellow and to take him back to Four-Pools.
As the door shut behind them, the sheriff said (with a sigh, I thought), "This business proves one thing: it's never safe to lynch a man until you are sure of the facts."
"It proves another thing," said Terry, dryly, "which is a thing you people don't seem to have grasped; and that is that negroes are human beings and have feelings like the rest of us. Poor old Colonel Gaylord paid a terrible price for not having learned it earlier in life."
We pondered this in silence for a moment, then the sheriff voiced a feeling which, to a slight extent, had been lurking in the background of my own consciousness, in spite of my relief at the dénouement.
"It's kind of disappointing when you've got your mind worked up to something big, to find in the end that there was nothing but a chance nigger at the bottom of all that mystery. Seems sort of a let-down."
Terry eyed him with an air of grim humor, then he leaned across the table and spoke with a ring of conviction that carried his message home.
"You are mistaken, Mattison, the murderer of Colonel Gaylord was not a chance nigger. There was no chance about it. Colonel Gaylord killed himself. He committed suicide—as truly as if he had blown out his brains with a gun. He did it with his uncontrollable temper. The man was an egoist. He has always looked upon his own desires and feelings as of supreme importance. He has tried to crush the life and spirit and independence from everyone about him. But once too often he wreaked his anger upon an innocent person—at least upon a person that for all he knew was innocent—and at one stroke his past injustices were avenged. It was not chance that killed Colonel Gaylord. It was the inevitable law of cause and effect. 'Way back in his boyhood when he gave way to his first fit of passion, he sentenced himself to some such end as this. Every unjust act in his after-life piled up the score against him.
"Oh, I've seen it a hundred times! It's character that tells. I've seen it happen to a political boss—a man whose business it was to make friends with every voter high and low. I've seen him forget, just once, and turn on a man, humiliate him, wound his pride, crush him under foot and think no more of the matter than if he had stepped on a worm. And I've seen that man, the most insignificant of the politician's followers, work and plot and scheme to overthrow him; and in the end succeed. The big man never knew what struck him. He thought it was luck, chance, a turn of the wheel. He never dreamed that it was his own character hitting back. I've seen it so often, I'm a fatalist. I don't believe in chance. It was Colonel Gaylord who killed himself, and he commenced it fifty years ago."
"It's God's own truth, Terry!" I said solemnly.
The sheriff had listened to Terry's words with an anxiously reminiscent air. I wondered if he were reviewing his own political past, to see if by chance he also had unwittingly crushed a worm. He raised his eyes to Terry's face with a gleam of admiration.
"You've been pretty clever, Mr. Patten, in finding out the truth about this crime," he acknowledged generously. "But you couldn't have expected me to find out," he added, "for I didn't know any of the circumstances. I had never even heard that such a man existed as that chicken thief—and as to there being two ghosts instead of one, there wasn't a suggestion of it brought out at the inquest."
Terry looked at him with his usual slowly broadening smile. He opened his mouth to say something, but he changed his mind and—with a visible effort—shut it again.
"Terry," I asked, "how did you find out about the chicken thief? I confess I don't understand it yet."
He shrugged his shoulders and laughed.
"Nothing simpler. The trouble with you people was that you were searching for something lurid, and the little common-place things which, in a case like this, are the most suggestive, you overlooked. As soon as I read the story of the crime in the papers I saw that in all probability Rad was innocent. His behavior was far too suspicious for him really to be guilty; unless he were a fool he would have covered up his tracks. There was of course the possibility that Mose had committed the murder, but in the light of his past devotion to the Colonel it did not seem likely.
"I had already been reading a lot of sensational stuff about the ghost of Four-Pools, and when the murder followed so close on the heels of the robbery, I commenced to look about for a connecting link. It was evident that Radnor had nothing to do with it, but whether or not he suspected someone was not so clear. His reticence in regard to the ha'nt made me think that he did. I came South with pretty strong suspicions against the elder son, but with a mind still open to conviction. The telegram showing that he was in Seattle at the time of the murder, proved his innocence of that, but he might still be connected with the ha'nt. I tried the suggestion on Radnor, and his manner of taking it proved pretty conclusively that I had stumbled on the truth. The ha'nt business, I dare say, was started as a joke, and was kept up as being a convenient method of warding off eavesdroppers. Why Jefferson came back and why Radnor gave him money are not matters that concern us; if they prefer to keep it a secret that's their own affair.
"Jeff helped himself pretty freely to cigars, roast chickens, jam, pajamas, books, brandy, and anything else he needed to make himself comfortable in the cabin, but he took nothing of any great value. In the meantime, though, other things commenced disappearing—things that Radnor knew his brother had no use for—and he supposed the workers about the place were stealing and laying it to the ghost, as a convenient scapegoat.
"But as a matter of fact they were not. A second ghost had appeared on the scene. This tramp negro had taken up his quarters in the spring-hole and was prowling about at night seeking what he might devour. He ran across Jeff dressed in a sheet, and decided to do some masquerading on his own account. Sheets were no longer left on the line all night, so he had to put up with lap robes. As a result, the spring-hole shortly became haunted by a jet black spirit nine feet tall with blue flames and sulphur, and all the other accessories.
"This made little impression at the house until Mose himself was frightened; then Radnor saw that the hoax had reached the point where it was no longer funny, and he determined to get rid of Jeff immediately. While he drove him to the station he left Mose behind to straighten up the loft; and Mose, coming into the house to put some things away, met ghost number two just after he had robbed the safe. If Mose's eyes looked as they did to-day I fancy the fright was mutual. The ghost, in his excitement, dropped one package of papers, but bolted with the rest. He made for his lair in the spring-hole and examined his booty. The bonds were no more than old paper; he tossed them aside. But the pennies and five-cent pieces were real; he lit out for the village with them. The robbery was not discovered till morning and by that time the fellow was at 'Jake's place' on his way toward being the drunkest nigger in the county.
"He stayed at the Corners a week or so until the money was gone, then he came back to the spring-hole. But he made the mistake of venturing out by daylight; the stable-men caught him and took him to the Colonel, and you know the rest.
"As soon as I heard the story of the beating I decided to follow it up; and when I heard of a jet black spirit rising from the spring-hole, I decided to follow that up too. At daylight this morning I routed out one of the stable-men, and we went down and examined the spring-hole; at least I examined it while he stood outside and shivered. It yielded an even bigger find than I had hoped for. Chucked off in a corner and trampled with mud I found the bonds. A pile of clothing and carriage cushions formed a bed. There were the remains of several fires and of a great many chickens—the whole place was strewn with feathers and bones; he had evidently raided the roosts more than once.
"When I finished with the spring-hole it still lacked something of six o'clock and I rode over to the village hoping to get an answer to my telegram. I wanted to get Jeff's case settled. 'Miller's store' was not open but 'Jake's place' was, and it was not long before I got on the track of my man. There was no doubt but that I had him accounted for up to the time of the thrashing; after that I could only conjecture. He had not appeared in the village again; the supposition was that he had taken to the woods. Now he might or he might not have come in the direction of Luray. All the facts I had to go upon were, a man of criminal proclivities, who owed Colonel Gaylord a grudge, and who was used to hiding in caves. It was pure supposition that he had come in this direction and it had to be checked at every point by fact. I didn't mention my suspicions because there was no use in raising false hopes and because, well—"
"You wanted to be dramatic," I suggested.
"Oh, yes, certainly, that's my business. Well, anyway I felt I was getting warm, and I came over here this morning with my eyes open, ready to see what there was to see.
"The first thing I unearthed was this story of the church social provisions. There had, then, been a thief of some sort in the neighborhood just at the time of Colonel Gaylord's murder. The further theft of the boots fitted very neatly into the theory. If the fellow had been tramping for a couple of days his shoes, already worn, had given out and been discarded. The new ones, as we know, were too small—he left them at the bottom of the pasture—and went bare-footed. The marks therefore in the cave, which everyone ascribed to Mose, were in all probability, not the marks of Mose at all. Actual investigation proved that to be the case. The rest, I think, you know. The Four-Pools mystery has turned out to be a very simple affair—as most mysteries unfortunately do."
"I reckon you're a pretty good detective, Mr. Patten," said Mattison with a shade of envy in his voice.
Terry bowed his thanks and laughed.
"As a matter of fact," he returned, "I am not a detective of any sort—at least not officially. I merely assume the part once in a while when there seems to be a demand. Officially," he added, "I am the representative of the New York Post-Dispatch, a paper which, you may know, has solved a good many mysteries before now. In this case, the Post-Dispatch will of course take the credit, but it wants a little more than that. It wants to be the only paper tomorrow morning to print the true details. We four are the only ones who know them. I should, perhaps, have been a little more circumspect, and kept the facts to myself, but I knew that I could trust you."