“Oh, I was the ghost! I went through there occasionally to stimulate your curiosity about the house. And you nearly caught me once!”

“One thing more, if we’re not wearing you out—I’d like to know whether Sister Theresa owes you any money.”

My grandfather turned upon Pickering with blazing eyes.

“You scoundrel, you infernal scoundrel, Sister Theresa never borrowed a cent of me in her life! And you have made war on that woman—”

His rage choked him.

He told Bates to close the door of the steel chest, and then turned to me.

“Where are those notes of Pickering’s?” he demanded; and I brought the packet.

“Gentlemen, Mr. Pickering has gone to ugly lengths in this affair. How many murders have you gentlemen committed?”

“We were about to begin actual killing when you arrived,” replied Larry, grinning.

“The sheriff got all his men off the premises more or less alive, sir,” said Bates.

“That is good. It was all a great mistake,—a very great mistake,”—and my grandfather turned to Pickering.

“Pickering, what a contemptible scoundrel you are! I lent you that three hundred thousand dollars to buy securities to give you better standing in your railroad enterprises, and the last time I saw you, you got me to release the collateral so you could raise money to buy more shares. Then, after I died”—he chuckled—“you thought you’d find and destroy the notes and that would end the transaction; and if you had been smart enough to find them you might have had them and welcome. But as it is, they go to Jack. If he shows any mercy on you in collecting them he’s not the boy I think he is.”

Pickering rose, seized his hat and turned toward the shattered library-door. He paused for one moment, his face livid with rage.

“You old fool!” he screamed at my grandfather. “You old lunatic, I wish to God I had never seen you! No wonder you came back to life! You’re a tricky old devil and too mean to die!”

He turned toward me with some similar complaint ready at his tongue’s end; but Stoddard caught him by the shoulders and thrust him out upon the terrace.

A moment later we saw him cross the meadow and hurry toward St. Agatha’s.

CHAPTER XXVII

CHANGES AND CHANCES

John Marshall Glenarm had probably never been so happy in his life as on that day of his amazing homecoming. He laughed at us and he laughed with us, and as he went about the house explaining his plans for its completion, he chaffed us all with his shrewd humor that had been the terror of my boyhood.