"I haven't talked with either you or him since your interview in the library. Was—was it satisfactory? Please tell me."
"With all the pleasure in the world. The interview was satisfactory—and I think I know what you mean by that! He accounted for his movements on the night before last with unimpeachable accuracy."
"Thank heaven!" said Miss Ocky. "I don't mean that I had any suspicion of him, but I'm glad if he has cleared himself in your eyes."
"He has, perfectly."
"I wish I knew what your plan of campaign is to be! You half promised to let me see just how a detective works, you know. What are you going to do first?"
"Suppose I don't know myself?" He paused to light her cigarette and one for himself, then added deliberately: "You can't always tell which way a detective will jump; they're worse'n cats."
"Oh!" cried Miss Ocky, and choked on a puff of smoke. "Eavesdropper!" she gasped.
"I didn't go for to do it. But if you will have these little intimate chats on a piazza without looking around the corner—! Now, you can tell me what it was all about."
"I'll tell you first that it's a mistake to take overheard remarks too seriously." Miss Ocky, recovered from smoke and emotion, smiled at the fire. "Once, when I was a little girl of seven, I got an awful scare that way—right in this very room, on a wild stormy night like this! I had come in to say good night to my father and mother, who were sitting before a fire as we are now. Just as I left the room, I heard my mother say to him, 'The old man is out to-night!' Unless you were a nervous, high-strung brat yourself, you can't imagine the effect of that on me. I crept off to bed shivering, and lay awake half the night. Every time the wind shook my windows, I pictured some monstrous, hoary-headed creature trying to get in and gobble me up!" She laughed a little. "It gives me a grue to think of it even yet. I discovered the explanation of the phrase the next day. Can you guess it?"
"No. Another local legend, perhaps?"