For a moment nobody spoke. The storm was at its height. The wind whistled and roared, the rain fell noisily, and the elements seemed to be doing their very worst.
Genevieve shuddered—she always was sensitive to weather conditions, and that wind was enough to disturb even equable nerves.
“And this same Mills was the phantom bugler?” asked Stone.
“Yes—he told me so,” returned Keefe. “He knew about the legend, you see, and he thought he’d work on the superstition of the family to divert attention from himself.”
Genevieve gasped, but quickly suppressed all show of agitation.
Fibsy whistled—just a few notes of the bugle call that the “phantom” had played.
At the sound Keefe turned quickly, a strange look on his face, and the Wheelers, too, looked startled at the familiar strain.
“Be quiet, Terence,” Stone said, rather severely, and the boy subsided.
“Now, Mr. Keefe,” Fleming Stone said, “you must not think—as I fear you do—that I grudge admiration for your success, or appreciation of your cleverness. I do not. I tell you, very sincerely, that what you have accomplished is as fine a piece of work as I have ever run across in my whole career as detective. Your intuition was remarkable and your following it up a masterpiece! By the way, I suppose that it was Mills, then, who started the fire in the garage?”
“Yes, it was,” said Keefe. “You see, he is a clever genius, in a sly way. He reasoned that if a fire occurred, everybody would run to it except Mr. Wheeler, who cannot go over the line. He hoped that, therefore, Mr. Appleby would not go either—for Mr. Appleby suffered from flatfoot—at any rate, he took a chance that the fire would give him opportunity to shoot unnoticed. Which it did.”