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There had been no murder, no robbery, no flight or hiding on the part of the Weggs to escape an injured enemy; nothing even mysterious, in the light of the story they had just heard. It was dreadfully humiliating and thoroughly disheartening, after all their earnest endeavor to investigate a crime that had never been committed.
Anyhow, he steals away to this forsaken spot, far from the sea or the railroads, and builds a fine house on a worthless farm, showing that he has money, but that retirement is his main object. Here the Weggs make no friends: but the wife cries her eyes out until she dies miserably, leaving a son to the tender mercies of a wicked father.
Especially he must be posted about the condition of the furniture, which I can guess is ill-suited to his needs." "How 'bout Hucks?" asked the agent. They all hung eagerly on West's reply, for Old Hucks was a general favorite. The fact that the old retainer of the Weggs had a blind wife to whom he was tenderly devoted made the proposition of his leaving the farm one of intense interest.
With the advent of the Weggs, however, a strong friendship seemed to spring up between the retired sea captain and the bluff, erratic old farmer, which lasted until the fatal day when one died and the other became a paralytic and a maniac. "We have always thought," said Ethel, "that the shock of the Captain's death unsettled my grandfather's mind.
An' the Cap'n were thet proud o' her thet he thought the world lay in her sweet eyes." "Oh. I had an idea he didn't treat her well," remarked the girl, soberly. "That's wrong," declared Nora, promptly. "Arter the trouble come fer it come to the Weggs as well as to Tom an' me the Cap'n sort o' lost heart to see his Mary cry day arter day an' never be comforted.
How you foolish girls could ever have imagined such a carnival of crime in connection with the Weggs is certainly remarkable." "I don't know about that, sir," returned the Major, seriously. "I was meself inoculated with the idea, and for a while I considered meself and the girls the equals of all the Pinkertons in the country.
Her voice softened at this last remark, and Patsy exclaimed, impulsively: "Tell us about Joe Wegg. Did you like him?" "Yes," said Ethel, simply; "we were naturally thrown much together in our childhood, and became staunch friends. Grandpa often took me with him on his visits to the Weggs, and sometimes, but not often, the Captain would bring Joe to see us.
And when ye come to think of it, the history of poor Captain Wegg and his wife, and of Nora and Thomas as well, is out of the ordinary entirely, and, without the explanation, contained all the elements of a first-class mystery." "How did you say the Weggs lost their money?" inquired Uncle John, turning the subject because he saw that it embarrassed his nieces.
As he had said, the Weggs had formed the chief topic of conversation in Millville for years, and no one had a more vivid interest in their history than Marshall McMahon McNutt. He enjoyed gossiping about the Weggs almost as much as he did selling books. "I never thought I had no call to stick my nose inter other folkses privit doin's," he said, after a few puffs at the corncob pipe.
The unsatisfactory result of this conversation did not discourage Louise, although she was sorry to meet with no better success. Gradually she was learning the inside history of the Weggs. When she discovered what that "great trouble" had been she would secure an important clue in the mystery, she was sure.
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