“The connection relates to Mrs. Macready’s late husband, Junius—for much of his life one of Baltimores most prominent citizens. In his latter years, this gentleman suffered grievous reversals which led to his near-total financial ruin and, ultimately, to his rapid physical decline and unseasonable death. The precise details of this catastrophe are, of course, unknown to me. But at the time of its occurrence, rumors abounded that his fall had been expedited, if not wholly effected, through a bitter feud with members of another venerable Baltimore family, the Ashers, whose fortune also underwent a considerable diminution through their monomaniacal pursuit of their vendetta against Macready. Indeed, far more than their wealth was affected, since the patriarch of the family, Samuel Asher—like his hated adversary Junius Macready—was left a broken man. He, too, perished soon afterwards, leaving as his only heirs a pair of notoriously reclusive—and, according to repute, wildly eccentric—adult children.”

“But where in thunderation does that buildin’ enter into it, Cricket?”

Here, I leaned forward in my seat and fixed the frontiersman with a firm, unwavering gaze, “According to newspaper accounts published at the time of Macready’s demise” I replied, “the precipitating cause of the enmity between this gentleman and the Ashers involved the edifice in question, in whose extravagantly costly construction the two had been major investors.”;

For several moments, the frontiersman sat frowning in silence, tugging pensively at his lower lip. “And you figger,” he inquired at last, “that these-here Asher children might’ve had a hand in Mrs. Macready’s killin’?”

“Given their apparently justified reputation for anomalous, if not highly abnormal, behavior—as well as the poisonous rancor that has, for many years, infected the relationship between the two parties—such a possibility is not wholly beyond question.”

“Well, then,” said Crodkett, rising purposefully to his feet. “Our path is plain as shootin’. We must commence by payin’ them Asher folks a little visit. Whereabouts will we find ’em, Cricket?”

“They continue to reside in their ancestral home, a once-splendid but now exceedingly dilapidated manse located in a remote area of the countryside, approximately twenty miles north of the city.”

Settling his wide-brimmed hat on his head, the frontiersman said: “Well then, Cricket, you’n me’d best get us some shut-eye. Come morning, I will hire us a couple of mounts at a livery stable and fetch you first thing after breakfast.”

“Your suggestion seems eminently reasonable,” said I, rising from my seat, “Allow me to show you to the door.”

Preceding the frontiersman out of the parlor and down the narrow hallway, I escorted him to the front door. Pausing at its threshold, I turned to him and said, “There is one final matter, Colonel Crockett. While fully committed to this enterprise, I must insist on a single stipulation.”

His brow knitted in evident perplexity.