“Over on the west-brow road we passed a place which looked as if it might be—or might some time have been—a gentleman’s country house. It is walled in from the road, with a magnificently groved lawn, a box-bordered, weed-grown carriage drive, and a great, rambling, porticoed mansion needing the repair-man pretty savagely. Still sitting up and taking notice?”
“Yes.”
“Just as were rolling up to pass the stone-pillared lodge-gates a horse and buggy came out, with a young woman driving. The horse was old and countrified, and he didn’t take kindly to the auto. So I stopped and got out to lead him past the machine. You won’t want to believe it, but the young woman driver was Miss Richardia; and the horse—well, no horseman would call it white, to be sure. It was a dapple-gray, light enough to pass for white in the moonlight, and with a mechanician like Rucker for the color expert.”
Tregarvon came out of his listless mood with a snap.
“Let it be said, once for all, Poictiers, that I won’t stand for any theory that involves Richardia Birrell in the crooked part of it,” he declared firmly. “I’d trust her with anything I own; with my life, if she cared to borrow it. That dapple-gray suggestion of yours makes my back ache! It isn’t worthy of you. Rucker said ‘white,’ and white isn’t gray; not by a long shot!”
“Wait,” said Carfax, evenly. “After I had led the horse safely past the car, I made sure. ‘Hold on a minute, Miss Richardia,’ said I, ‘let me see if your horse hasn’t a pebble in his shoe.’ That gave me an excuse to lift his near hind foot. There wasn’t any pebble, of course, but the shoe was badly worn, and the toe-calk had a piece broken out of it!”
Tregarvon maintained a stubborn silence for a full minute. Then he denied again, with more heat than the occasion seemed to demand.
“I don’t care what evidence you bring. I’ll believe nothing against Richardia; nothing, you understand? And, after all, what does it amount to? We agreed this morning that she might blamelessly take an evening drive with Hartridge. The fact that they were driving behind her father’s horse cuts no especial figure that I can see.”
“She might have been driving with Hartridge blamelessly; we agree on that. Or even still more blamelessly with—her father.”
“Put it in words,” snapped Tregarvon.