"Bosh!" said Tod, lightly whiffing away his friend's suspicions, which indeed had little foundation. "Rebb is no worse, nor no better, than any other man. We all have turned-down pages in our life's book, which we should like no one to read."
"That's quite a high flight of oratory for you," said Haskins dryly.
"Oh I can gas as well as most, when necessary," retorted the other, "but you are asinine, seeing a bird in every bush."
"H'm!" murmured Gerald, unconvinced. "All the same, I shall keep my eye on Major Rebb."
"And so take a lot of trouble for nothing. So long as he does not cross your path I don't see why you should worry. Hello!" Tod had entered the sitting-room by this time. "Here's the phonograph." He examined it narrowly in the failing light. "And Jekle & Co. at that. By gum!"
"What do you say now?" cried Haskins, pleased that his surmise had proved correct. "I'll bet that we are on the verge of discovering a mystery. Wait until we hear a few hymns, and then we can experiment with our river record."
"But why bother about the hymns?" grumbled Macandrew, who by this time was quite as curious as Haskins himself.
Gerald glanced at the door, and closed it. "I don't want the nigger to think that anything unusual has happened."
"More suspicion," said Tod, and glanced in his turn, but at the window, "you needn't fash yourself, as we say in Scotland. There's Geary walking down to the village."
It was indeed the negro strolling with a crony along the brookside, and when he had sauntered out of earshot Haskins did not worry about the hymn tunes. He slipped the cylinder record on to the machine, and set the thing going. Then, for the next minute, he and Tod listened in amazement to a message from Fairyland.