He reflected that this was what had queered the whole run, through Binnhart’s self-sufficiency, though that fellow, Treherne, did tell, in his sleep, where the money was hid. If they had known--if they had only known--what constituted the capital of a pillar. It had been mismanaged--mismanaged from the beginning, and once more he declared that it was Captain Hugh Treherne who had queered the whole run.
He walked slowly down the stairs into the broad hall, and then, threading the vacant apartments with the definite intention of familiarity, he came into the room where poor Hugh Treherne had lain for hours bound and gagged, not knowing whether his sufferings were actual or the distraught illusions of his mental malady.
Connover stood looking at the many footprints in the dust on the floor, clustered about the clear space where the man had lain. In the corners of the apartment the dust was thick and gray and evidently had not been disturbed in years. Here it was that the refugees of the _Cherokee Rose_ had found Captain Treherne. But _he_ could not have informed his rescuers where the swag was hidden. He himself did not know,--he could not say when he was awake. By reason of his distorted mental processes only in dreams did his memory rouse itself; only his somnolent words could reveal the story of the hiding of the treasure in the capital of the pilaster. As, in his ignorant fashion, Connover sought to realize the situation he groped for the clew of its discovery. How had they chanced to find it? Could the woman have overheard the talk of the gang from the window of the attic, and, knowing the signification of the terms “pilaster” and “capital,” could she have fallen like a hawk upon her prey? Oh, Binnhart was distanced by the whole field,--a fool and a fake. And if he should botch this hold-up that he had planned for Randal Ducie---- Suddenly a nervous thrill agitated Connover. He was conscious that an eye was upon him, a fixed, furtive scrutiny. He gazed wildly about the desolate, empty room. Almost he could see a vague figure at the door withdrawing abruptly as he glanced toward it, but when he ran into the hall there was naught for sixty feet along which any spy upon him must have passed. Still, as he returned, reassured, he felt again that covert gaze. Nothing was visible at the window on one side of the apartment. On the other side the room was lighted by a glass door opening on a veranda, in which the panes had recently been shattered, and broken glass lay about. When he pulled it ajar loose bits fell from the frame and crashed upon the floor, setting astir keen shrill echoes through the empty desolation that put every quivering nerve to the torture. Outside he heard a vague, silly laugh even before he perceived Mrs. Berridge standing close against the wall in her effort to escape observation, her head, with its towsled copper hair, all bare, but an apron pinned shawl-wise around her shoulders in lieu of a wrap.