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Paynter said that he rarely slept, even at night. "... Right on my own front porch, mind you!" Major Brooke was declaiming. "And, gentlemen, I shook my finger in his face and said, 'Sir, I never yet met a Republican who was not a rogue! Yes, sir, that is just what I told him "
This, together with my natural jealousy that some bad thing or other may be in the way, did trouble me exceedingly, so as I was in a doubt whether to go thither or no, but having fitted myself and my things I did go, and by night got thither, where I met my wife walking to the waterside with her paynter, Mr. Browne, and her mayds.
To begin with, surely the first assumption is that the woodman's ax is used by the Woodman. What have you to say to it?" "I say 'No' to it," replied the lawyer. "The last weapon a woodman would use would be a woodman's ax; that is if he is a sane man." "He isn't," said Paynter quietly; "you said you wanted the doctor's opinion just now. The doctor's opinion on this point is the same as my own.
His story corroborates Miss Penning's in every detail, he also said that after killing Paynter he had shot a girl witness and thrown her from the car to prevent her squealing." Once again the telephone bell rang, long and insistently. The butler almost ran into the room. "Payson wants you, sir," he cried to Burton, "in a hurry, sir, it's a matter of life and death, sir!"
So far as little Fifi was concerned, it turned out that these agonies were superfluous; he had helped her with her lessons for the last time. She did not appear in the dining-room the next night, or the next, or the next. Inquiries from the boarders drew from Mrs. Paynter the information that the child's cough had pulled her down so that she had been remanded to bed for a day or two to rest up.
"It is like being shipwrecked on the coast of fairyland," he said, "I hope you haven't been shipwrecked much," replied his host, smiling. "I fancy Jake here can look after you very well." Mr. Paynter looked across at the boatman and smiled also. "I am afraid," he said, "our friend is not quite so enthusiastic for this landscape as I am." "Oh, the trees, I suppose!" said the Squire wearily.
Doctor Brown had lifted his head; and he now very slowly lifted his hand. He pointed with outstretched arm at the headland overhanging the foreshore, just above the entrance to the cave. It was the exact part of the beach where Paynter had first landed, on that spring morning when he had looked up in his first fresh wonder at the peacock trees. But the trees were gone.
He was always spoken of in the columns of The Oakdale Tribune as 'that well known man-about-town, or 'one of Oakdale's most prominent clubmen. Reginald Paynter had been, if not the only, at all events the best dressed man in town. His clothes were made in New York. This in itself had been sufficient to have set him apart from all the other males of Oakdale.
The lawyer thought it worth noting, however, that the rag was certainly newer and cleaner than the chopper. But both were quite dry. "Mr. Paynter," he said at last, "I admit you have scored, in the spirit if not in the letter. In strict logic, this greater puzzle is not a reply to my case.
Sometimes in the mornings she cried a little, without knowing why. Sometimes she said a vague, sad little thing that brought her mother's heart, stone cold, to her mouth. But her talk was mostly very bright and hopeful. Ten minutes before Queed came in she had been telling Mrs. Paynter about something she would do in the fall.
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