Part 57

"Yass, seh!--I'm to shoot anyone what tries to get in."

"Not exactly!" laughed Croyden. "You're to shoot anyone who tries to break in. For Heaven's sake! don't shoot me, when I return, or any one else who comes legitimately. Be sure he is an intruder, then bang away."

"Sut'n'y, seh! I onderstands. I'se dub'us bout hittin', but I kin bang away right nuf. Does yo' spose any one will try to git in, seh?"

"No, I don't!" Croyden smiled--"but you be ready for them, Moses, be ready for them. It's just as well to provide against contingencies."

"Yass, seh!" as Croyden went out and the front door closed behind him, "but dem 'tingencies is monty dang'ous t'ings to fools wid. I don' likes hit, dat's whar I don'."

Croyden found Miss Carrington just where he had left her--a quick return to the sofa having been synchronous with his appearance in the hall.

"I had a mind not to wait here," she said; "you were an inordinately long time, Mr. Croyden."

"I was!" he replied, sitting down beside her. "I was, and I admit it--but it can be explained."

"I'm listening!" she smiled.

"Before you listen to me, listen to Robert Parmenter, deceased!" said he, and gave her the letter.

"Oh, this is the letter--do you mean that I am to read it?"

"If you please!" he answered.

She read it through without a single word of comment--an amazing thing in a woman, who, when her curiosity is aroused, can ask more questions to the minute than can be answered in a month. When she had finished, she turned back and read portions of it again, especially the direction as to finding the treasure, and the postscript bequests by the Duvals.

At last, she dropped the letter in her lap and looked up at Croyden.

"A most remarkable document!" she said. "Most extraordinary in its ordinariness, and most ordinary in its extraordinariness. And you searched, carefully, for three weeks and found--nothing?"

"We did," he replied. "Now, I'll tell you about it."

"First, tell me where you obtained this letter?"

"I found it by accident--in a secret compartment of an escritoire at Clarendon," he answered.

She nodded.

"Now you may tell me about it?" she said, and settled back to listen.

"This is the tale of Parmenter's treasure--and how we did not find it!" he laughed.

Then he proceeded to narrate, briefly, the details--from the finding of the letter to the present moment, dwelling particularly on the episode of the theft of their wallets, the first and second coming of the thieves to the Point, their capture and subsequent release, together with the occurrence of this evening, when he was approached, by the well-dressed stranger, at Clarendon's gates.

And, once again, marvelous to relate, Miss Carrington did not interrupt, through the entire course of the narrative. Nor did she break the silence for a time after he had concluded, staring thoughtfully, the while, down into the grate, where a smouldering back log glowed fitfully.

"What do you intend to do, as to the treasure?" she asked, slowly.

"Give it up!" he replied. "What else is there to do?"

"And what about this stranger?"

"He must give it up!" laughed Croyden. "He has no recourse. In the words of the game, popular hereabout, he is playing a bobtail!"

"But he doesn't know it's a bobtail. He is convinced you found the treasure," she objected.