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Updated: June 27, 2025
"And now," said Terry, lighting a fresh cigar, and after a few preliminary puffs, settling down to work again, "we will consider the case of Cat-Eye Mose a beautiful name, by the way, and apparently a beautiful character. It won't be my fault if we don't make a beautiful story out of him. You, yourself, I believe, hold the opinion that he committed the murder?" "I am sure of it," I cried.
He probably did not regard the appropriation of the bonds as stealing, since everything by his father's will was to come to him ultimately. "As to all this hocus-pocus about the ha'nt, that is easily explained. He needed a scapegoat on whom to turn the blame when the bonds should disappear; so he and this Cat-Eye Mose between them invented a ghost.
Radnor was excused with this, and the next half hour was spent in a consideration of the foot-prints that were found in the clay path at the scene of the murder. The marks of Cat-Eye Mose were admitted immediately, but the others occasioned considerable discussion. Facsimiles of the prints were produced and compared with the riding boots which the Colonel and Radnor had worn at the time.
The people on the place call him 'Cat-Eye Mose. You needn't be afraid of him," he added with another laugh, "he's harmless." We had a sensation at supper that night, and I commenced to realize that I was a good many miles from New York.
He appears to have been a reckless, dashing, headstrong, but exceedingly attractive fellow. His father put up with his excesses for six years before the final quarrel. Cat-Eye Mose, so old Jake tells me, moped for months after his disappearance. Rad, as a little fellow, worshipped his bad but charming brother. There you have it.
"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.
Mattison, seeing no meaning in this sally, preserved a sulky silence and Terry added: "The thing for us to do now is to bend all our energies toward finding Cat-Eye Mose. I doubt if we can completely explain the mystery until he is discovered." "And that," said the sheriff, "will be never! You may mark my words; whoever killed the Colonel, killed Mose, too."
As it happens I do not base my charge on the letter; I had already formed my opinion before I knew of its existence. Do you deny that you yourself have encouraged the belief in the ghost among the negroes? That on more than one occasion, you, or your accomplice, Cat-Eye Mose, have masqueraded as the ghost?
I myself saw him beat a nigger a few days ago," and I recounted the story of the chicken thief. "So! A man of that sort is likely to have enemies he doesn't suspect. How about Cat-Eye Mose? Was Colonel Gaylord in the habit of whipping him?" "Often," I nodded, "but the more the Colonel abused Mose, the fonder Mose appeared to grow of the Colonel."
I had hitherto been so occupied with the necessary preparations for the funeral, and with instituting a search for Cat-Eye Mose, that I had scarcely had time to think, let alone map out any logical plan of action. Radnor was so stunned by the blow that he could barely talk coherently, and as yet I had had no satisfactory interview with him.
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