“I may as well own up,” Keefe said, “I am hard hit by your daughter. Oh, yes, I know she is engaged to young Allen, and I’ve no hope she would ever throw him over for me, but I’m anxious to serve her in any way I can—and I feel pretty sure that I can be of help to you and your family.”
“Well spoken, young man. And your promises are right. I am out of touch with the world, and I should be glad indeed of the advice of an experienced man of business. But, first of all, will you tell me who you think killed Appleby?”
“I will, sir. I’ve no idea it was any of you three people, who have all confessed to the deed, in order to shield one another.”
“Whom then do you suspect?”
“An outside intruder. I have held to this theory from the start, and I am sure it is the true one. Moreover, I think the murderer is the man who blew the bugle——”
“The phantom bugler!”
“No phantom, but a live man. Phantoms do not blow on bugles except in old English legends. A bugle sounded in New England and heard by several people, was blown by human lungs. Find your bugler and you’ve found your murderer.”
“I wonder if you can be right!”
Wheeler fell into a brown study and Keefe watched him closely. His bugler theory was offered in an effort to find out what Wheeler thought of it, and Wheeler’s response ought to show whether his own knowledge of the murder precluded the bugler or not.
Apparently it did, for he sighed and said: “Of course the person who sounded that bugle was a live person, but I cannot think it had any connection with Mr. Appleby’s death. Even granting somebody might have been wicked enough to try to frighten my wife, yet there is no reason to think any one wishing to kill Samuel Appleby would know of the old legend in Mrs. Wheeler’s family.”