“No!” said the scout. “I am not ill; there’s nothing the matter with me. I need no medicine.”
Latimer came and looked him closely in the face, holding up the candle.
“Cody, I insist that no young man or young woman is on this place, so far as I know. But——” He hesitated.
“Finish the sentence,” the scout urged.
“Well, what I mean to remind you of is that there have been strange happenings in this house. I’ve mentioned them. These are some of the mysterious things which I told you would make me superstitious, if there were any superstition in my nature.”
“You have seen this young man and woman?”
“Yes, I have seen them. And then I promptly dosed myself for the benefit of my nerves; not being sure then, or now, that I had seen anything at all. But if there are ghosts in this house——”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said the scout. “I saw a young man and young woman standing together on the piazza, and heard them talking. They came into the house; and they locked from the inside the door I had unlocked, so that I had to call to you to get in. That wasn’t the work of ghosts. What became of them?”
“Cody,” said Latimer impressively, “what became of Nomad?” He looked at Buffalo Bill again in that peculiar manner. “Cody,” he said impressively, “I’ll tell you now something I have not hinted at. A young woman and her lover, who at the time were occupying the house here in my absence, were killed here. Who committed the murder, or why, was never shown; but I suspected the Redskin Rovers. On two occasions since then I myself have fancied that I saw a young man and a young woman here; but I knew then, and know now, that it was only fancy, a result of a heated imagination. A good many things have happened to-day to upset you, and they have excited your mind and made it morbid. So you fancied you saw the young man and the young woman.”
To Buffalo Bill it seemed that Latimer was trying to throw him off the scent. Yet he could hardly see how Latimer would expect him to believe this unlikely statement.