As the New Yorker’s hypothesis had assumed, the buggy tracks led directly to Highmount; or at least the assumption seemed a fair one. The two investigators did not follow the vehicle trail all the way to the college gates; could not, since the trail-recording wood road came out into the hard-metalled mountain pike a few hundred yards below the Highmount grounds, and the wheel marks were no longer visible. But there seemed to be no reasonable doubt of the correctness of Carfax’s guess; and Tregarvon admitted as much on the way back to the starting-point.
“Mind you, I’m not admitting that Richardia was a party to anything underhanded or crooked,” he added in qualification. “She may have been driving with Hartridge; as you say, there isn’t any particular reason why she shouldn’t go buggy-riding with him if she wishes to; and she may have walked down to the glade with him. I don’t say that she didn’t; but I do say that she isn’t tangled up in any of the disreputable mysteries, knowingly.”
“Oh, no; I’d be as loath to admit that as you are,” said Carfax gently. “In fact, it is barely possible that I have the better right to defend her. We’ll put it all up to Hartridge. The next thing is to find out, if we can, where Hartridge got his two surveyors on such short notice, and what it was that could be proved or disproved by a transit sight taken in the moonlight under conditions which must have barred anything like mathematical accuracy. Where are your blue-prints of the Ocoee property?—down below, or up here?”
The map copies were in the tool-house, one set of them; and when they were found, Carfax spread them out on the cot and pored over them thoughtfully.
“You are not trespassing on somebody else’s land, at all events,” was the verdict, rendered after he had verified the position of the glade in which the fourth test-hole was being driven. “It is all Ocoee in every direction; your land covers all this part of the mountain. By the way, what is this name, ‘Westwood,’ written across these mountain-top plats?”
Tregarvon did not know, and he said so; adding that he supposed it might be the name of the original owner of the land.
“Who is he? Ever hear of him?”
“I don’t recall that I have. But that is not singular. I haven’t had occasion, or the time, to dig very deeply into ancient history.”
“Well, there doesn’t seem to be anything very illuminating about these blue-prints, save that they establish your perfect right to bore holes almost anywhere you please,” said Carfax. “Suppose we go now and take up the trail of the two surveyors.”
The track of the second buggy proved to be a short scent soon lost. Within a hundred yards of its turning-point opposite the glade the buggy had left the wood road, the tracks swerving to the right in a direction opposite to that taken by the earlier vehicle; and neither the wheels nor the hoofs of the horse had left any impress on the thick carpeting of fallen leaves under the trees; or none that amateur trailers could see and follow.