Warnebold, plainly impressed by Mrs. Winter’s grand air, assured them both that he felt that everything that could be done had been done; Miss Smith was quite wonderful; and he would admit (of course, confidentially) that Mr. Keatcham did have a heart trouble; Mr. Mercer had recalled one or two fainting fits; there was some congestion; and the doctor found a sad absence of reaction; he believed that there had been a—er—syncope of some sort before the stabbing; Mr. Keatcham himself, although he was still too weak to talk much, had no recollection of anything except a very great faintness. Mr. Mercer’s theory seemed to cover the ground.
“Except as to who did the stabbing,” said the colonel.
“Has Mr. Keatcham any bitter enemies?” asked Aunt Rebecca thoughtfully.
“What man who has made a great fortune hasn’t?” demanded Warnebold with a saturnine wrinkle of the lips. “But our enemies don’t stab or shoot us, nowadays.”
“They do out West,” said the colonel genially; “we’re crude.”
“Are you in earnest?”
“Entirely. I know a man, a mine superintendent, who got into a row with his miners because he discharged a foreman, one of the union lights, for stealing ore. In consequence he got a big strike on his hands, found a dynamite bomb under his front piazza, and was shot at twice. The second time he was too quick for them; he shot back and killed one of them. He thought it was time to put a stop to so much excitement, so he sent for the second assassin—”
“And had him arrested?”
“Oh, dear, no; he wasn’t in Massachusetts; I told you he wanted the thing stopped. No, he sent for him and told him that he had no special ill feeling toward him, but that the next time anything of the kind happened he had made arrangements to have not him, or any other thug who was doing the work, but the two men who were at the bottom of the whole business, killed within twenty-four hours. They took the hint and kind feeling now prevails.”
Warnebold grunted; he declared it to be a beastly creepy situation; he said he never wanted to sit down without a wall against his back; and he intimated that the president of the United States was to blame for more than he realized. “I hope you have some one watching the house,” he fumed, “and that he—well, he doesn’t belong to the police force.”