Though I was pretty sure that the gardener was the man whose face I had seen at the window a few moments before, yet I was not positive; his next words, however, were a confession:
“Suppose I was?” he snarled. “There is no harm in that.”
“Maybe not,” retorted the chief. “But you were pretty anxious to get away without being seen.”
“You're right there, Officer,” laughed Ranville. “He was running as fast as he could when he banged into me.”
Ranville was wearing a light summer suit—a suit remarkable, not only for the fineness of the cloth, but also for the way it was pressed; now it was a mass of wrinkles, stained and soiled from the dirt. But though the face of the Englishman had a dark streak which ran from his eyes to his lips, yet from his manner one would never have thought that only a moment or so before he had been struggling with the gardener.
His remark caused the chief to make a vain attempt to wring from the man the reason why he had been looking in the window, and also why he had run away. But the gardener refused to make any explanations. He would simply shrug his shoulders, or else growl out that he had done nothing. In the end the chief, by this time a very angry man, announced he would lock him up in the jail for the night.
“Maybe by morning you will feel like talking,” was the statement he hurled at the gardener.
We waited until after the chief had called the police station and asked them to send a car for his prisoner. Then bidding him good night, we left the library and started for our car. As we walked down the path, Ranville told us that though we had said we would walk back to the house, yet it had taken so little time to reach the secretary's home that he had come back to pick us up. He had just started up the path to the library when he heard running footsteps and the next second the man had plunged against him. The two men had rolled over and over and as the man seemed determined to get away, Ranville had decided that he had better discover who he might be.
All the way back to the house we discussed the matter, reaching no conclusion. How long the gardener had been watching us or for what reason we could not say. Ranville was more interested in endeavoring to find out why the man had attempted to get away without being seen. To him that was the suspicious thing. Otherwise he would have seen no reason to become excited over the fact the man had looked in the window. Curiosity could explain that action. It would not, however, explain his effort to escape without being seen. We were still talking about it when we drove into the yard.
Telling Bartley that I would place the car in the garage, I let the two men out by the drive, noticing as I did so that the lights were turned on in the house. The dog leaped with a bark to greet me as I opened the garage door and followed me when I went into the house. Hearing the sound of voices in the living room, I entered to find Bartley talking with Carter's neighbor, the minister.