The evasiveness might have been more apparent, had there been any reason for suspicion, or had the bystanders been allowed longer time to reflect upon it.
While the inquiry was going on, light came in from a quartet hitherto unthought of. The landlord of the Rough and Ready, who had come uncalled to the council, after forcing his way through the crowd, proclaimed himself willing to communicate some facts worth their hearing—in short, the very facts they were endeavouring to find out: when Henry Poindexter had been last seen, and what the direction he had taken.
Oberdoffer’s testimony, delivered in a semi-Teutonic tongue, was to the effect: that Maurice the mustanger—who had been staying at his hotel ever since his fight with Captain Calhoun—had that night ridden out at a late hour, as he had done for several nights before.
He had returned to the hotel at a still later hour; and finding it open—on account of a party of bons vivants who had supped there—had done that which he had not done for a long time before—demanded his bill, and to Old Duffer’s astonishment—as the latter naïvely confessed—settled every cent of it!
Where he had procured the money “Gott” only knew, or why he left the hotel in such a hurry. Oberdoffer himself only knew that he had left it, and taken all his ‘trapsh’ along with him—just as he was in the habit of doing, whenever he went off upon one of his horse-catching expeditions.
On one of these the village Boniface supposed him to have gone.
What had all this to do with the question before the council? Much indeed; though it did not appear till the last moment of his examination, when the witness revealed the more pertinent facts:—that about twenty minutes after the mustanger had taken his departure from the hotel, “Heinrich Poindexter” knocked at the door, and inquired after Mr Maurice Gerald;—that on being told the latter was gone, as also the time, and probable direction he had taken, the “young gentlemans” rode off a a quick pace, as if with the intention of overtaking him.
This was all Mr Oberdoffer knew of the matter; and all he could be expected to tell.
The intelligence, though containing several points but ill understood, was nevertheless a guide to the expeditionary party. It furnished a sort of clue to the direction they ought to take. If the missing man had gone off with Maurice the mustanger, or after him, he should be looked for on the road the latter himself would be likely to have taken.
Did any one know where the horse-hunter had his home?