"Here, you see, is the end of the Colonel's candle. He probably dropped it when the man first sprang, and in the darkness he could not tell who or what had attacked him. In his frenzy to have a light he snatched out his match box—Radnor's box—and that too was dropped in the scuffle.
"Now, even if the original motive of the crime were not robbery but revenge—as I fancy it was—at any rate the murderer, being a tramp and a thief, would have robbed the body. But he did not. Why was that? Because he saw or heard something that frightened him, and what could that have been but Mose running to his master's assistance?"
Terry strode over to the steps which led to the incline, and motioning us to follow, pointed out some marks on the sloping bank at the side of the path.
"See, here are Mose's tracks. He was in such a hurry that he could not wait to come up by the steps; he tried to take a cross cut. He scrambled up the slippery bank so fast that he fell on his hands and knees in this place and slid back. That accounts for those long dragging marks, which none of you appear to have noticed. Mose did his best, but he could not reach his master in time. The murderer seeing—or rather hearing him, for it must have been dark—was seized with sudden fear, and with a convulsive effort he threw the old man against the rock wall here, where his head struck on this broken stalactite. If you look carefully you can see the marks of blood. He then hurled him into the pool and fled."
"It sounds plausible enough," said the sheriff slowly, "but there are one or two points which I'm afraid will not bear examining. Suppose your man did thrown the Colonel into the water and run for it, then what, I should like to know, has become of Cat-Eye Mose?"
"That," said Terry, knitting his brows, "is still a mystery and a fairly deep one. There is something uncommonly strange about those tracks on the lower borders of the pool and I confess they puzzle me. Only one explanation occurs to me now and that is not pleasant to think of. We have some clues to work with however, and we ought not to be long in getting at the truth. If I had had your chance of examining the cave on the day of the crime," he added, "I think I should know."
"You might, and again you might not," said Mattison. "It's easy enough for you fellows to come down here and make up a story about a lot of people you've never seen, but I'll tell you one thing, and that is that you're not so likely to hit the truth as the men who've been brought up in the country. In the first place it comes natural to niggers to be whipped and they don't mind it. In the second place if your tramp did want to take it out on the Colonel why should he be scared by Mose, who was a little bit of a sawed-off cuss that I could lick with one hand tied behind me? You may be able to impress a New York jury with a ham bone and a cheese rind, Mr. Patten, but I can tell you, sir, that a Virginia jury wants witnesses."
"We shall do our best to provide some," said Terry, coolly.
"And perhaps you can tell," added Mattison with the triumphant air of clinching the matter, "what has become of the five thousand dollars in bonds? You can never make me believe that any nigger—"