An epidemic that closed the gates of Ardsley would assume the proportions of a national disaster; for even if the great house itself were quarantined, there were lodges and bungalows scattered over the domain, where a host of guests could be entertained in comfort. Griswold reflected that the very fact that he had wired from Columbia must have intimated to Ardmore that his friend was flying toward him, pursuant to the Atlanta invitation. Griswold dismissed a thousand speculations as unworthy. Ardmore had never shown the remotest trace of snobbishness, and as far as the threatened house party was concerned, Griswold knew Mrs. Atchison very well, and had been entertained at her New York house.
The patronizing tone of the thing caused Griswold to flush at every reading. If the Ardsley date-line had not been so plainly written; if the phraseology were not so characteristic, there might be room for doubt; but Ardmore—Ardmore, of all men, had slapped him in the face!
But, scarlet fever or no scarlet fever, the pursuit of Appleweight had precedence of private grievances. By the time he reached Turner Court House Griswold had dismissed the ungraciousness of Ardmore, and his jaws were set with a determination to perform the mission intrusted to him by Barbara Osborne, and to wait until later for an accounting with his unaccountable friend.
Arrived at Turner's, Griswold strode at once toward the court house. The contemptuous rejection of his message by the sheriff of Mingo had angered Griswold, but he was destined to feel even more poignant insolence when, entering the sheriff's office, a deputy, languidly posed as a letter "V" in a swivel-chair, with his feet on the mantel, took a cob pipe from his mouth and lazily answered Griswold's importunate query with:
"The sheriff ain't hyeh, seh. He's a-visitin' his folks in Tennessy."
"When will he be back?" demanded Griswold, hot of heart, but maintaining the icy tone that had made him so formidable in cross-examination.
"I reckon I don't know, seh."
"Do you know your own name?" persisted Griswold sweetly.
"Go to hell, seh," replied the deputy. He reached for a match, relighted his pipe, and carefully crossed his feet on the mantel-shelf. The moment Griswold's steps died away in the outer corridor the deputy rose and busied himself so industriously with the telephone that within an hour all through the Mingo hills, and even beyond the state line, along lonely trails, across hills and through valleys, and beside cheery creeks and brooks, it was known that a strange man from Columbia was in Mingo County looking for the sheriff, and Appleweight, alias Poteet, and his men were everywhere on guard.