Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/266

 about Peter Pomeroy. Can it be he didn’t know the old gent?”

He returned to his reading of the text. He had an idea that perhaps mad old Peter Pomeroy had used a part of the text to indicate the hiding place of his money—but how had he used it? That was the point at which Val had to confess himself stumped.

That, he reflected, was one of the places he considered himself stumped. There were others. In the rush of events this night, he had had no time to think about his strange liberation in the old house on the Pomeroy grounds. Who was it who had cut him loose from his bonds? What ghostly fingers were those that had wielded the knife?

Even now, in the light of his own room, with Eddie sitting opposite him, he shivered involuntarily when he thought of it. Like the figure of a dream it was—the shadow that had been his benefactor there. And yet, who was it? The question recurred again and again. Flesh and blood it was, of course—it was a sure enough knife that had done the cutting; he had felt the concrete, fleshly touch of the liberator.

There was someone prowling around the old estate that none of them knew of, he inclined. Someone who, knew his way about, too; with the lightness, softness of a cat, with the ability to blend with the eccentric, ghostly shadows that filled the old place. Someone who did not like Teck, it would appear, else why should he go to the trouble to cut loose his enemy?

That there was someone there who would in the end have to be reckoned with, Val was sure. He did not think that the Unknown had made its last appearance in this matter. He felt that there would be a time when he would be face to face with the Mystery