When the five of us were gathered together, we consulted, and finally put it up to the commissioner to decide what ought to be done in the interests of good citizenship. After listening to me, to Mr. Dunsany and to the doctor, all of whom felt the same, though for different reasons, he voted with us. We agreed that Mount had taken the best way out under the circumstances. None of us wanted to drag his dead body through the mire. As much of the loot as could be recovered was already recovered. None of us wanted to see any more scandal aired in the newspapers. Therefore it was given out that Mr. Mount had committed suicide while motoring in the country, and no cause for the act was assigned.
Of course I told Roland and Irma the truth, so that no shadow might dim their future happiness.
33
Little more remains to be told. For weeks afterwards the case was threshed out in the newspapers, but nothing was brought out that you do not already know. No suspicion attached to Mount's chauffeur and footman. They had met him at the Greenwood City station according to orders. He had exclaimed at the beauty of Ringstead plains, and they thought that was why he had himself carried back and forth so many times. On the last journey he had remarked the locust tree, speaking of the rarity of the species, and had ordered them to stop so that he could examine it. They knew nothing about trees, of course. They had not seen him pick up the keys.
The news of Mount's death took all the fight out of Lorina. Whatever human feeling there was in that woman was all for him. It appeared that her devotion to him was so abject, that she was even willing to help him in his plotting to secure Irma for his wife.
The thieves were sent up for terms more or less corresponding to the degrees of their guilt. Lorina and Foxy are still there. Jumbo is out now, and professes to have reformed. He seems to bear me no malice, and occasionally braces me for a small loan. One of the gang, Bella Bleecker, escaped for lack of evidence. I knew that she was one of Lorina's creatures, whom Mount had placed near Irma as a spy, but there was nothing to connect her with the thefts.
There was one mysterious feature of the case which the trial did not clear up, i.e., the source of Roland's handsome legacy. I had my suspicions but no proof. Mount's doctor was one of his executors and I was permitted to examine the dead man's papers. I found that on the last day of March previous he had drawn $40,000 in cash.
This was pretty conclusive, but there was a link of evidence still missing. Continuing a search of Mount's effects I found a receipted bill from an obscure lawyer for legal services rendered about this time. I looked the man up.
He proved to be a seedy, servile little creature, one of the desperate hangers-on of the outer fringe of a respectable profession. Mount being dead and no longer a possible employer it was easy to make the lawyer talk.