“Clearly; I see they did. You had a hand-to-hand fight with them, and being two to one—”
“No; there were two of us,—don’t you understand, two of us! There was another man who came running in from somewhere, and he took sides with me. I thought at first it was you. The robbers thought so, too, for one of them yelled, ‘Great God; it’s Glenarm!’ just like that. But it wasn’t you, but quite another person.”
“That’s a good story so far; and then what happened?”
“I don’t remember much more, except that some one soused me with water that helped my head considerably, and the next thing I knew I was staring across the table there at you.”
“Who were these men, Bates? Speak up quickly!”
My tone was peremptory. Here was, I felt, a crucial moment in our relations.
“Well,” he began deliberately, “I dislike to make charges against a fellow man, but I strongly suspect one of the men of being—”
“Yes! Tell the whole truth or it will be the worse for you.”
“I very much fear one of them was Ferguson, the gardener over the way. I’m disappointed in him, sir.”
“Very good; and now for the other one.”