The House of the Whispering Pines

"Who are you?" he asked, with a touch of anger, quite natural under the circumstances. "Can't you come in by the door, and not creep sneaking up to take a man at disadvantage?"

As he spoke, he dashed away the tears with which his cheeks were still wet.

"I thought a heap of my young mistress," he added, in evident apology for this display of what such men call weakness. "I didn't know that it was in me to cry for anything, but I find that I can cry for her."

Hexford left his window, and Sweetwater slid from his; next minute they met at the stable door.

"Had luck?" whispered the local officer.

"Enough to bring me here," acknowledged the other.

"Do you mean to this house or to this stable?"

"To this stable."

"Have you heard that the horse was out that night?"

"Yes, she was out."

"Who driving?"

"Ah, that's the question!"

"This man can't tell you."

A jerk of Hexford's thumb in Zadok's direction emphasised this statement.

"But I'm going to talk to him, for all that."

"He wasn't here that night; he was at a dance. He only knows that the mare was out."

"But I'm going to talk to him."

"May I come in, too? I'll not interrupt. I've just fifteen minutes to spare."

"You can do as you please. I've nothing to hide—from you, at any rate."

Which wasn't quite true; but Sweetwater wasn't a stickler for truth, except in the statements he gave his superiors.

Hexford threw open the stable-door, and they both walked in. The coachman was not visible, but they could hear him moving about above, grumbling to himself in none too encouraging a way.

Evidently he was in no mood for visitors.

"I'll be down in a minute," he called out, as their steps sounded on the hardwood floor.

Hexford sauntered over to the stalls. Sweetwater stopped near the doorway and glanced very carefully about him. Nothing seemed to escape his eye. He even took the trouble to peer into a waste-bin, and was just on the point of lifting down a bit of broken bottle from an open cupboard when Brown appeared on the staircase, dressed in his Sunday coat and carrying a bunch of fresh, hot-house roses.

He stopped midway as Sweetwater turned towards him from the cupboard, but immediately resumed his descent and was ready with his reply when Hexford accosted him from the other end of the stable:

"An odd beast, this. They don't drive her for her beauty, that's evident."

"She's fast and she's knowing," grumbled the coachman. "Reason enough for overlooking her spots. Who's that man?" he grunted, with a drop of his lantern jaws, and a slight gesture towards the unknown interloper.

"Another of us," replied Hexford, with a shrug. "We're both rather interested in this horse."

"Wouldn't another time do?" pleaded the coachman, looking gravely down at the flowers he held. "It's most time for the funeral and I don't feel like talking, indeed I don't, gentlemen."

"We won't keep you." It was Sweetwater who spoke. "The mare's company enough for us. She knows a lot, this mare. I can see it in her eye. I understand horses; we'll have a little chat, she and I, when you are gone."

Brown cast an uneasy glance at Hexford.

"He'd better not touch her," he cautioned. "He don't know the beast well enough for that."

"He won't touch her," Hexford assured him. "She does look knowing, don't she? Would like to tell us something, perhaps. Was out that night, I've heard you say. Curious! How did you know it?"

"I've said and said till I'm tired," Brown answered, with sudden heat. "This is pestering a man at a very unfortunate time. Look! the people are coming. I must go. My poor mistress! and poor Miss Carmel! I liked 'em, do ye understand? Liked 'em—and I do feel the trouble at the house, I do."

His distress was so genuine that Hexford was inclined to let him go; but Sweetwater with a cock of his keen eye put in his word and held the coachman where he was.

"The old gal is telling me all about it," muttered this sly, adaptable fellow. He had sidled up to the mare and their heads were certainly very close together. "Not touch her? See here!" Sweetwater had his arm round the filly's neck and was looking straight into her fiery and intelligent eye. "Shall I pass her story on?" he asked, with a magnetic smile at the astonished coachman, which not only softened him but seemed to give the watchful Hexford quite a new idea of this gawky interloper.

"You'll oblige me if you can put her knowledge into words," the man Zadok declared, with one fascinated eye on the horse and the other on the house where he evidently felt that his presence was wanted. "She was out that night, and I know it, as any coachman would know, who doesn't come home stone drunk. But where she was and who took her, get her to tell if you can, for I don't know no more 'n the dead."

"The dead!" flashed out Sweetwater, wheeling suddenly about and pointing straight through the open stable-door towards the house where the young mistress the old servant mourned, lay in her funeral casket. "Do you mean her—the lady who is about to be buried? Could she tell if her lips were not sealed by a murderer's hand?"

"She!" The word came low and awesomely. Rude and uncultured as the man was, he seemed to be strangely affected by this unexpected suggestion. "I haven't the wit to answer that," said he. "How can we tell what she knew. The man who killed her is in jail. He might talk to some purpose. Why don't you question him?"

"For a very good reason," replied Sweetwater, with an easy good-nature that was very reassuring. "He was arrested on the spot; so that it wasn't he who drove this mare home, unharnessed her, put her back in her stall, locked the stable-door and hung up the key in its place in the kitchen. Somebody else did that."

"That's true enough, and what does it show? That the mare was out on some other errand than the one which ended in blood and murder," was the coachman's unexpected retort.

"Is that so?" whispered Sweetwater into the mare's cocked ear. "She's not quite ready to commit herself," he drawled, with another enigmatical smile at the lingering Zadok. "She's keeping something back. Are you?" he pointedly inquired, leaving the stalls and walking briskly up to Zadok.

The coachman frowned and hastily retreated a step; but in another moment he leaped in a rage upon Sweetwater, when the sight of the flowers he held recalled him to himself and he let his hand fall again with the quiet remark:

"You're overstepping your dooty. I don't know who you are or what you want with me, but you're overstepping your dooty."

"He's right," muttered Hexford. "Better let the fellow go. See! one of the maids is beckoning to him."

"He shall go, and welcome, if he will tell me where he gets his taste for this especial brand of whiskey." Sweetwater had crossed to the cupboard and taken down the lower half of the broken bottle which had attracted his notice on his first entrance, and was now holding it out, with a quizzical look at the departing coachman.

Hexford was at his shoulder with a spring, and together they inspected the label still sticking to it—which was that of the very rare and expensive spirit found missing from the club-house vault.

"This is a find," muttered Hexford into his fellow detective's ear. Then, with a quick move towards Zadok, he shouted out:

"You'd better answer that question. Where did this bit of broken bottle come from? They don't give you whiskey like this to drink."

"That they don't," muttered the coachman, not so much abashed as they had expected. "And I wouldn't care for it if they did. I found that bit of bottle in the ash-barrel outside, and fished it out to put varnish in. I liked the shape."