His mind was quite clear on the subject. Roon and Paul were not ordinary robbers. They were, no doubt, honest men. He would have said that they were thieves bent on burglarising Green Fancy were it not for the disclosures of Miss Thackeray and the very convincing proof that they were not shot by the same man. Detected on the grounds about Green Fancy by a watchman, they would have had an encounter with him there and then. Moreover, they would have taken an active part in the play of firearms. Desperadoes would not have succumbed so tamely.
It was not beyond reason,—indeed, it was quite probable,—that they were trying to cross the border; in that event, their real operations would be confined to the Canadian side of the line. They were unmistakably foreigners. That fact, in itself, went far toward establishing in his mind the conviction that they were not attempting to intercept any one coming from the other side. Equally as strong was the belief that the Canadian authorities would not have entered upon United States territory for the purpose of apprehending these suspects, no matter how thoroughly the movements and motives of the two men might have been known to them.
He could not free himself of the suspicion that Green Fancy possessed the key to the situation. Roon and his companion could not have had the slightest interest in his movements up to the instant he encountered the young woman at the cross-roads. It was ridiculous to even consider himself an object of concern to these men who had been haunting the border for days prior to his appearance on the scene. They were interested only in the advent of the woman, and as her destination confessedly was Green Fancy, what could be more natural than the conclusion that their plans, evil or otherwise, depended entirely upon her arrival at the strange house on the mountainside? They had been awaiting her appearance for days. The instant it became known to them that she was installed at Green Fancy, their plans went forward with a swiftness that bespoke complete understanding.
His busy brain suddenly suffered the shock of a distinct conclusion. So startling was the thought that he stopped abruptly in his walk and uttered an exclamation of dismay. Was she a fellow-conspirator? Was she the inside worker at Green Fancy in a well-laid plan to rifle the place? She too was unmistakably a foreigner.
Could it be possible that she was the confederate of these painstaking agents who lurked with sinister patience outside the very gates of the place called Green Fancy?
In support of this theory was the supposition that O'Dowd may have been perfectly sincere in his declarations over the telephone. Opposed to it, however, was the absolute certainty that Roon and Paul were waylaid and killed at widely separated points, and not while actively employed in raiding the house. That was the rock over which all of his theories stumbled.
His ramble carried him far beyond the spot where Roon's body was found and where young Conley had come upon the tethered horses. His eager, curious gaze swept the forest to the left of the road in search of Green Fancy. Overcome by a rash, daring impulse, he climbed over the stake and rider fence and sauntered among the big trees which so far had obscured the house from view. He had looked in vain for the lane or avenue leading from the road up to Mr. Curtis's house. He could not have passed it in his stroll, of that he was sure, and yet he remembered distinctly seeing O'Dowd and De Soto turn their horses into the forest at a point far back of the place where he now entered the grounds.
The trees grew very thickly on the slope, and they were unusually large. Virgin timber, he decided, on which the woodman's axe had made no inroads. The foliage was dense. Tree tops seemed to intermingle in one vast canopy through which the sun but rarely penetrated. The bright green of the grass, the sponginess of the soil, the presence of great stretches of ferns and beds of moss told of almost perpetual moisture. Strangely enough there was no suggestion of dankness in these shadowy glades, rich with the fulness of early Spring.
He progressed deeper into the wood. At the end of what must have been a mile, he halted. There was no sign of habitation, no indication that man had ever penetrated so far into the forest. As he was on the point of retracing his steps toward the road, his gaze fell upon a huge moss-covered rock less than a hundred yards away. He stared, and gradually it began to take on angles and planes and recesses of the most astounding symmetry. Under his widening gaze it was transformed into a substantial object of cubes and gables and—yes, windows.
He was looking upon the strange home of the even stranger Mr. Curtis: Green Fancy.