"No, Kate was the first to see it. She flew up-stairs when she heard the scream; found Miriam a senseless heap on the floor, the desk open on the little table by the window, the contents scattered, the window up, and somebody bounding and slipping away in the moonlight. Then she heard the challenge and scuffle outside and thought the guard had him, and gave her whole attention to Miriam, until Mr. Barker shouted from the lower hall. Oh, yes, cook and Maggie both declare they were in their room, but—I believe they were next door at the Snaffles'. I believe the back door was left open for—whoever it was."
"Nothing. He was frightened off evidently. But Captain Sumter wished to have it all kept quiet until he could confer with the detectives in town. He has a theory of his own."
She had lowered her voice, and now walked to the hall door, as though listening for sounds from aloft, whither Kate and Miriam had vanished.
"Miss Kate has a level head," presently spoke Larrabee. "What does she say?"
"Doctor, that is what troubles me! Kate won't say—anything. It's the first time she ever kept a secret from me." And now tears of genuine distress were welling in Mrs. Sumter's eyes.
It was half after two, and the wind was shrieking through the open space back of the line, when Doctor Larrabee, bending almost double, managed to fight his way homeward. Schuchardt, occupant of the adjoining set to his own, had not yet returned. At Sumter's gate the senior surgeon encountered the corporal-of-the-guard, nearly blind and well nigh exhausted. He had been sent round to relieve the men on post and bid them make the best of their way to the guard-room. He was even then searching for Number Five, who had most justifiably, in fact, involuntarily, taken refuge as previously explained. Had he not been blown into the Snaffles' kitchen, he might, like Barker's cow, have been blown away.
"You will probably find Doctor Schuchardt at Lieutenant Lanier's quarters," shouted Larrabee at the corporal, with kindly intent. "Take Number Five in there and get thawed out. Tell him I think a nip of whiskey advisable under the circumstances."
And thus it happened that two storm-beaten soldiers presently shoved their way through Lanier's back gate and banged at the kitchen door. Nobody answering, they presently entered, passed through that deserted apartment, and, hearing voices further on, the corporal ventured into the dark hallway leading through the little frame house, now fairly quivering in the blast. Here he caught sight of two officers—big, powerful men, in fur caps and canvas overcoats, just pushing forth through the front door into the fierce blast without. One was Doctor Schuchardt, the other Lieutenant Ennis, joint occupant with Lanier of the tiny premises. As Corporal Cassidy later expressed it, he felt "like I'd lost a bulging pot on an ace full." He couldn't run after and beg them to come back, yet he and his comrades were stiff from cold and almost breathless from exhaustion. Suddenly Number Five's carbine slipped from his frozen glove and fell with a crash on the kitchen floor. The next instant the voice of Lieutenant Lanier was heard.
"Who the devil's that?"