"Can I see him?" asked the detective, after some thought.
"No, sir; the doctor left word that he was to see no one."
With this Gebb was forced to be content; and as already he had obtained Alder's permission to search the Hall, he went away rather low-spirited. It seemed hard that the man should come to an untimely end, just when he inherited his kingdom. Moreover, he had behaved very well in defending Ferris in the face of all evidence, and releasing him from prison; therefore Gebb thought it just as well to send a line to the artist and Edith, so that they might come forward in their turn to do what they could for the man who had acted so generously towards them both.
"It's hard lines," said Gebb to himself, when he had posted his letter. "I do call it hard. Alder gained a fortune, it is true; but he lost the woman he wished to marry, and now he loses his life. It's a queer world, that gives a man a pleasure only to take it away from him again. I don't understand the workings of Providence nohow."
With this philosophical reflection, Gebb went home to make his plans before going down to Norminster the next day. He had little hope of success, however, and now that Alder was dying, he wondered, if he did capture the murderer, if the reward would be paid to him.
"Of course it will," he said to himself on reflection, "for if Alder dies. Miss Wedderburn becomes mistress of the Hall."
[CHAPTER XX]
A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK
It was a bright and sunny day when Gebb found himself once more at Kirkstone Hall. In the sunshine the building looked grim and desolate. The smokeless chimneys, the closed doors, dusty windows, and grass-grown terraces, gave the place a forlorn and wretched aspect; and the absence of life, the silence broken only by the twittering of the birds, the neglected gardens, created, even to the detective's prosaic mind, an atmosphere of menace and dread. It looked like a place with a history; and Gebb wondered if Miss Wedderburn, on becoming its mistress, would care to inhabit it again.
"When she marries Ferris and begins a new life, I dare say she will seek some more cheerful abode," he thought, as he stood on the terrace, and looked on the silent house. "It would be foolish for a young couple to dwell with the ghosts of the past. I am not imaginative myself, but I should not care to live here; no, not if the house was given to me rent free. If I were Miss Wedderburn I'd pull it down and build a new place without a past or a ghost."