"By gosh, she ain't nothin' like him," confided Peter. "She's all fuss an' feathers an' he is jest as simple as you er me. Nothin' fluffy about him, I c'n tell ye. Course, he must 'a' had a screw loose some'eres when he made sich a botch of that house up there, but it's his'n an' there ain't no law ag'in a man doin' what he pleases with his own property." He sighed deeply. "I'm jest as well pleased to go as not," he went on. "Mrs. Collier's got a lot o' money of her own, an' she's got highfalutin' New York ideas that don't seem to jibe with mine. Used to be a time when everything was nice an' peaceful up here, with Sally Perkins doin' the cookin' and her daughter waitin' table, but 'tain't that way no more. Got to have a man cook an' men waitresses, an' a butteler. An' it goes ag'in the grain to set down to a meal with them hayseeds from Italy. You never saw sich table manners."
He rambled on for some minutes, expanding under the soulful influence of his own woes and the pleasure of having a visible auditor instead of the make-believe ones he conjured out of the air at times when privacy afforded him the opportunity to lament aloud.
At any other time Barnes would have been bored by such confidences as these. Now he was eagerly drinking in every word that Peter uttered. His lively brain was putting the whole situation into a nutshell. Assuming that Peter was not the most guileful person on earth, it was quite obvious that he not only was in ignorance of the true state of affairs at Green Fancy but that he was to be banished from the place while still in that condition.
Long before they came to the turnpike, Barnes had reduced his hundred and one suppositions to the following concrete conclusion: Green Fancy was no longer in the hands of its original owner for the good and sufficient reason that Mr. Curtis was dead. The real master of the house was the man known as Loeb. Through O'Dowd he had leased the property from the widowed daughter-in-law, and had established himself there, surrounded by trustworthy henchmen, for the purpose of carrying out some dark and sinister project.
Putting two and two together, it was easy to determine how and when O'Dowd decided to cast his fortunes with those of the leader in this mysterious enterprise. Their intimacy undoubtedly grew out of association at the time of the Balkan Wars. O'Dowd was a soldier of fortune. He saw vast opportunities in the scheme proposed by Loeb, and fell in with it, whether through a mistaken idea as to its real character or an active desire to profit nefariously time only would tell. Green Fancy afforded an excellent base for operations. O'Dowd induced his sister to lease the property to Loeb,—or he may even have taken it himself. He had visited Mr. Curtis on at least two occasions. He knew the place and its advantages. The woman known as Mrs. Collier was not the sister of Curtis. She—but here Barnes put a check upon his speculations. He appealed to Peter once more.
"I suppose Mrs. Collier has spent a great deal of time up here with her brother."
"First time she was ever here, so far as I know," said Peter, and Barnes promptly took up his weaving once more.
With one exception, he decided, the entire company at Green Fancy was involved in the conspiracy. The exception was Miss Cameron. It was quite clear to him that she had been misled or betrayed into her present position; that a trap had been set for her and she had walked into it blindly, trustingly. This would seem to establish, beyond question, that her capture and detention was vital to the interests of the plotters; otherwise she would not have been lured to Green Fancy under the impression that she was to find herself among friends and supporters. Supporters! That word started a new train of thought. He could hardly wait for the story that was to fall from her lips.
Peter swerved into the main-road. "Guess I c'n hit her up a little now," he said.
"Take it slowly, if you please," said Barnes. "I've had one experience in this car, going a mile a minute, and I didn't enjoy it."