I made my way to the front door, but returned almost immediately.
Drawing the major aside, I whispered a request, which led to a certain small article being passed over to me, after which I sauntered out on the stoop just in time to encounter the spruce but irate figure of Mr. Moore, who had crossed from the opposite side.
"Ah!" said I. "Good morning!" and made him my most deferential bow.
He glared and Rudge glared from his place on the farther curb.
Evidently the police were not in favor with the occupants of the cottage that morning.
"When is this to cease?" he curtly demanded. "When are these early-morning trespasses upon an honest citizen's property coming to an end? I wake with a light heart, expecting that my house, which is certainly as much mine as is any man's in Washington, would be handed over this very day for my habitation, when what do I see - one police officer leaving the front door and another sunning himself in the vestibule. How many more of you are within I do not presume to ask. Some half-dozen, no doubt, and not one of you smart enough to wind up this matter and have done with it."
"Ah! I don't know about that," I drawled, and looked very wise.
His curiosity was aroused.
"Anything new?" he snapped.
"Possibly," I returned, in a way to exasperate a saint.
He stepped on to the porch beside me. I was too abstracted to notice; I was engaged in eying Rudge.
"Do you know," said I, after an instant of what I meant should be one of uncomfortable suspense on his part, "that I have a greater respect than ever for that animal of yours since learning the very good reason he has for refusing to cross the street?"
"Ha! what's that?" he asked, with a quick look behind him at the watchful brute straining toward him with nose over the gutter.
"He sees farther than we can. His eyes penetrate walls and partitions," I remarked. Then, carelessly and with the calm drawing forth of a folded bit of paper which I held out toward him, I added:
"By the way, here is something of yours"
His hand rose instinctively to take it; then dropped.
"I don't know what you mean," he remarked. "You have nothing of mine."
"No? Then John Judson Moore had another brother." And I thrust the paper back into my pocket.
He followed it with his eye. It was the memorandum I had found in the old book of memoirs plucked from the library shelf within, and he recognized it for his and saw that I did also. But he failed to show the white feather.
"You are good at ransacking," he observed; "pity that it can not be done to more purpose."
I smiled and made a fresh start. With my hand thrust again into my pocket, I remarked, without even so much as a glance at him:
"I fear that you do some injustice to the police. We are not such bad fellows; neither do we waste as much time as you seem to think."
And drawing out my hand, with the little filigree ball in it, I whirled the latter innocently round and round on my finger. As it flashed under his eye, I cast him a penetrating look.
He tried to carry the moment off successfully; I will give him so much credit. But it was asking too much of his curiosity, and there was no mistaking the eager glitter which lighted his glance as he saw within his reach this article which a moment before he had probably regarded as lost forever.
"For instance," I went on, watching him furtively, though quite sure from his very first look that he knew no more now of the secret of this little ball than he knew when he jotted down the memorandum I had just pocketed before his eyes, "a little thing - such a little thing as this," I repeated, giving the bauble another twist - "may lead to discoveries such as no common search would yield in years.
I do not say that it has; but such a thing is possible, you know: who better?"
My nonchalance was too much for him. He surveyed me with covert dislike, and dryly observed "Your opportunities have exceeded mine, even with my own effects. That petty trinket which you have presumed to flaunt in my face - and of whose value I am the worst judge in the world since I have never had it in my hand - descended to me with the rest of Mrs. Jeffrey's property. Your conduct, therefore, strikes me in the light of an impertinence, especially as no one could be supposed to have more interest than myself in what has been for many years recognized as a family talisman."
"Ah," I remarked. "You own to the memorandum then. It was made on the spot, but without the benefit of the talisman."
"I own to nothing," he snapped. Then, realizing that denial in this regard was fatal, he added more genially: "What do you mean by memorandum? If you mean that recapitulation of old-time mysteries and their accompanying features with which I once whiled away an idle hour, I own to it, of course. Why shouldn't I? It is only a proof of my curiosity in regard to this old mystery which every member of my family must feel. That curiosity has not been appeased.
