an
involuntary glance about the room where the only sign of comfort was the
newly upholstered lounge. "That day was the sixteenth, and we all know
what happened on that date. If this is not plain enough--" I had seen
his lip curl--"allow me to add, by way of explanation, that you have
seen fit to threaten Mrs. Ocumpaugh herself with this date, for I know
well the hand which wrote _August 16_ on the bungalow floor and in
various other places about Homewood where her eye was likely to fall."
And I let my own fall on a sort of manuscript lying open not far from
the Bible, which still looked so out of place to me on this
pagan-hearted old miser's table. "Such chirography as yours is not to be
mistaken," I completed, with a short gesture toward the disordered
sheets he had left spread out to every eye.

"I see. A detective without doubt. Did you play the detective here?"

The last question leaped like a shot from his lips.

"You have not denied the threats to which I have just called your
attention," was my cautious reply.

"What need of that?" he retorted. "Are you not a--_detective_?"

There was sarcasm, as well as taunt in the way he uttered that last
word. I was conscious of being at a loss, but put a bold front on the
matter and proceeded as if conscious of no secret misgiving.

"Can you deny as well that you have been gone two days from this place?
That during this time a doctor's buggy, drawn by a horse I should know
by description, having harnessed him three times a day for two years,
was seen by more than one observer in the wake of a mysterious wagon
from the interior of which a child's crying could be heard? The wagon
did not drive up to this house to-night, but the buggy did, and from it
you carried a child which you brought with you into this house."

With a sudden down-bringing of his old but powerful hand on the top of
the table before him, he seemed about to utter an oath or some angry
invective. But again he controlled himself, and eying me without any
show of shame or even of desire to contradict any of my assertions, he
quietly declared:

"You are after that reward, I observe. Well, you won't get it. Like many
others of your class you can follow a trail, but the insight to start
right and to end in triumphant success is given only to a genius, and
you are not a genius."

With a blush I could not control, I advanced upon him, crying:

"You have forestalled me. You have telegraphed or telephoned t