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Perhaps they're in the game together, and he wanted you to send word that way, knowing that Hotchkiss would be able to reach him," Thad concluded. "Looks like you'd got it all figgered out right, Thad," admitted Davy, in open admiration for the genius of his chum.
And then through the rain-spattered window of the blanket, I saw a light. It was a small light, rather yellow, and it lasted perhaps thirty seconds. Hotchkiss missed it, and was inclined to doubt me. But in a couple of minutes the roan hobbled to the side of the road and stopped, and I made out a break in the pines and an arched gate. It was a small gate, too narrow for the buggy.
He had certainly never dreamed of the far more important purpose to which this road would be put, but he had been found at his home by Hotchkiss, the major, and, zealous for the South, he had given him the information that was of so much value. He had also volunteered to guide the troops along his road and he had marked it on a map which the major carried.
"Gentlemen," he said, his face ghastly, "it is of no use for me to attempt a denial. The dagger and necklace belonged to my sister, Alice Curtis!" Hotchkiss was the first to break the tension. "Mr. Sullivan," he asked suddenly, "was your sister left-handed?" "Yes." Hotchkiss put away his note-book and looked around with an air of triumphant vindication.
"I'll think of a way." Cudgel his brains as he might, however, he could think of no plausible escape from the difficulty. He had found no excuse by lunch time, and was relieved that Cousin Jasper did not appear, being deep in some task in his study. At half past two Janet went upstairs to dress and Hotchkiss came to Oliver in the library to say: "The car was to be ready at three o'clock, sir.
Hotchkiss, I owe you a thousand apologies, sir, that er a weapon should be drawn by me even through your own inadvertence under the sacred protection of my roof, and upon an unarmed man. I beg your pardon, sir, and I even withdraw the expressions which provoked that inadvertence.
Whatever it was it passed on, however. I was growing curious and the restraint was telling on McKnight. He has no talent for secrecy. In the interval we discussed the strange occurrence at Cresson, which lost nothing by Hotchkiss' dry narration. "And so," he concluded, "the woman in the Baltimore hospital is the wife of Henry Sullivan and the daughter of the man he murdered.
There was a noise such as a small boy makes when he draws a stick along the palings of a picket fence, a series of flame-jets leaped from the muzzle of the gun, and the targets disappeared. "You'd have broken up that charge," commented the officer approvingly. "Try the others." So I tried them all Maxim, Hotchkiss, Colt, St. Etienne, Lewis in turn. "Which do you consider the best gun?" I asked.
What we want to find out is just who these people were, where they came from, if Bronson knew them, and how Miss West became entangled with them. She may have married Sullivan, for one thing." I fell into gloom after that. The roan was led unwillingly into the weather, Hotchkiss and I in eclipse behind the blanket. The liveryman stood in the doorway and called directions to us.
I roused with a start and leaped to my feet, and a large Angora cat fell with a thump to the floor. The fire was still bright, and there was an odor of scorched leather through the room, from Hotchkiss' shoes. The little detective was sound asleep, his dead pipe in his fingers. The cat sat back on its haunches and wailed.
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