“It’s the heater fumes,” Cassie said promptly. “They’ve affected you. Sit down here on the bench, Bill, and let me get you a nice drink of water. George is Chard’s brother, you know. It was Medora that Chard was doing her duty to.”
“Cassie,” Leonidas said, “would you have gone through with any such expedition simply because Medora Winthrop ordered you to?”
“Certainly not,” Cassie said. “I should have told her that I was a companion-housekeeper-secretary, but I drew the line at tracking down thieves. You’d have to draw the line somewhere.”
“Unless, possibly,” Leonidas said, “you wished to exonerate yourself. Suppose that with your poor brother George ill, you helped yourself to a small amount of Medora’s money. And then suppose someone else took the entire sum. That would be a sufficient goad for you to fly after Leslie, wouldn’t it? Because, whereas Medora would give money to Rutherford for a new pistol range, I doubt if she’d lend him carfare. Medora wouldn’t lend me carfare. She wouldn’t lend money to anyone.”
“That’s perfectly true,” Cassie said. “She never lent a cent in her life. Not even ferry toll, that time I forgot my pocketbook. I had to borrow from the toll man. She’d never have lent Chard a cent, or advanced her a penny of her salary. She was like that. She—but see here, Bill, how do you know that? Bill, you knew Medora!”
“M’yes,” Leonidas said. “Didn’t you guess? I knew her when she was young, and not unlike Elsa Otis. Not,” he added critically, “not quite so many teeth, perhaps, but otherwise she was very like Elsa. And, like Dow, somehow I found myself engaged to Medora”
“And you jilted her!” Cassie said. “You’d had to have. She’d never have let you go. That’s why she was so rabid about you, and why she was going to run you out of town—oh, of course! We always called you Bill, or Bill Shakespeare, and we called your house ‘Bill’s place.’ And then she found out it was you. Was that why you made that crack about being in the cobra’s grasp?”
Leonidas nodded.
“I began to realize the possibilities of the situation. Er—‘Bearded Swain Slays Former Jilted Fiancee with Police Chief’s Ax.’ That sort of thing.”
“How’d you ever manage to jilt her?” Cassie asked interestedly. “What happened? Quick—is that Cuff and Margie?”
“Just a taxi circling around. Frankly,” Leonidas said with a reminiscent smile, “I was pretty despondent about Medora. Jilting was harder in those days. Then, one night, I recklessly took her home from a concert in a carriage, all the way to Melrose. And after I paid the driver and sent him off, I discovered that I hadn’t train fare back to Boston. So, rather shamefacedly, I asked Medora—”
“And she got furious!”
“She slammed the door in my face,” Leonidas said, “and I walked home. The next afternoon I called to apologize, and to beg the loan of fifty dollars. That, I am happy to say, terminated our engagement.”
Cassie grinned.
“No wonder she didn’t want you perched up alongside her, on the hill. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Of course, you didn’t exactly scorn her.”
“No,” Leonidas said, “but it amounted to the same thing. I think possibly that explains why Miss Chard was wandering around this morning. She probably told Medora all that happened on the train, and described me.”
“And Medora sent her over to see if you were well enough to be brought home, or to come home. Bill, I simply never heard anything like this. Nothing happens. Like Haseltine, I mean. No one’s been dynamited, or dropped from an airplane, but it just seems to be getting more and more complicated every single minute!”
“On the contrary,” Leonidas said, “it is boiling itself down. All I really want to know, now, is how much money was in the brush box. If it’s a sufficiently large sum, I think we may well uphold Cuff’s—er—haruspication, and say that everything will be settled quite soon/’
Cassie gritted her teeth.
“I keep asking myself,” she said plaintively, “is it those heater fumes, or does he really know! Do you? And what about your red refrigerator, Bill? What’s that got to do with it? Why—Bill, there’s a car! Is it them? Look and see!”
Leonidas looked, and then reached for his hat. “Lieutenant Haseltine,” he said, “was never any gladder to see the U.S.S. Idaho steam into sight over the horizon. Come along!”
The two of them rushed out of the station.
“That’s a nice enough sedan,” Cassie said, “but why it took him all this time to get it— Bill, look! Look!”
But Leonidas was already aware of Miss Chard, shivering on the seat beside Cuff and Margie.
CHAPTER 9
“SWISS CHARD! Swiss—”
“Stop, Cassie,” Leonidas said firmly. “We had enough of that this afternoon!”
“But it’s Miss Chard. It is, isn’t it?” Cassie climbed into the sedan. “It is you, isn’t it, Miss Chard?”
“Yes.” Miss Chard didn’t sound any too positive, Leonidas thought. She sounded frightened to death. “Mrs. Price, this young fellow and this young woman have kept saying that I’d see you and talk with your and—oh, I’m upset! They kept saying that if I’d just wait, you’d explain everything. But I don’t understand. Any of it. I don’t understand a bit!”
“Nobody does,” Cassie returned. “Only Bill, and he’s just guessing. Where’d they find you?”
“I was just walking into the auditorium—for the monster Voters League meeting, you know. I hadn’t intended to go, but Mrs. Otis said I must, because it was very important. And as I went up the steps, a man came up
