The Four Pools Mystery | Page 3

chronicle
his achievement in one instance--in what he himself has always
referred to as the "Four-Pools Mystery." It has already been written up
in reporter style as the details came to light from day to day. But a
ten-year-old newspaper story is as dead as if it were written on
parchment, and since the part Terry played was rather remarkable, and
many of the details were at the time suppressed, I think it deserves a
more permanent form.
It was through the Patterson-Pratt business by a roundabout way that I
got mixed up in the Four-Pools affair. I had been working very hard
over the forgery case; I spent every day on it for nine weeks--and
nearly every night. I got into the way of lying awake, puzzling over the
details, when I should have been sleeping, and that is the sort of work
which finishes a man. By the middle of April, when the strain was over,
I was as near being a nervous wreck as an ordinarily healthy chap can
get.
At this stage my doctor stepped in and ordered a rest in some quiet
place out of reach of the New York papers; he suggested a fishing
expedition to Cape Cod. I apathetically fell in with the idea, and invited
Terry to join me. But he jeered at the notion of finding either pleasure
or profit in any such trip. It was too far from the center of crime to
contain any interest for Terry.
"Heavens, man! I'd as lief spend a vacation in the middle of the Sahara
Desert."
"Oh, the fishing would keep things going," I said.

"Fishing! We'd die of ennui before we had a bite. I'd be murdering you
at the end of the first week just for some excitement. If you need a
rest--and you are rather seedy--forget all about this Patterson business
and plunge into something new. The best rest in the world is a
counter-irritant."
This was Terry all over; he himself was utterly devoid of nerves, and he
could not appreciate the part they played in a man of normal make-up.
My being threatened with nervous prostration he regarded as a joke.
His pleasantries rather damped my interest in deep-sea fishing,
however, and I cast about for something else. It was at this juncture that
I thought of Four-Pools Plantation. "Four-Pools" was the somewhat
fantastic name of a stock farm in the Shenandoah Valley, belonging to
a great-uncle whom I had not seen since I was a boy.
A few months before, I had had occasion to settle a little legal matter
for Colonel Gaylord (he was a colonel by courtesy; so far as I could
discover he had never had his hands on a gun except for rabbit shooting)
and in the exchange of amenities which followed, he had given me a
standing invitation to make the plantation my home whenever I should
have occasion to come South. As I had no prospect of leaving New
York, I thought nothing of it at the time; but now I determined to take
the old gentleman at his word, and spend my enforced vacation in
getting acquainted with my Virginia relatives.
This plan struck Terry as just one degree funnier than the fishing
expedition. The doctor, however, received the idea with enthusiasm. A
farm, he said, with plenty of outdoor life and no excitement, was just
the thing I needed. But could he have foreseen the events which were to
happen there, I doubt if he would have recommended the place for a
nervous man.
CHAPTER II
I ARRIVE AT FOUR-POOLS PLANTATION
As I rolled southward in the train--"jerked" would be a fitter word; the
roadbeds of western Virginia are anything but level--I strove to recall

my old time impressions of Four-Pools Plantation. It was one of the big
plantations in that part of the state, and had always been noted for its
hospitality. My vague recollection of the place was a kaleidoscopic
vision of music and dancing and laughter, set in the moonlit
background of the Shenandoah Valley. I knew, however, that in the
eighteen years since my boyhood visit everything had changed.
News had come of my aunt's death, and of Nan's runaway marriage
against her father's wishes, and of how she too had died without ever
returning home. Poor unhappy Nannie! I was but a boy of twelve when
I had seen her last, but she had impressed even my unimpressionable
age with a sense of her charm. I had heard that Jeff, the elder of the two
boys, had gone completely to the bad, and having broken with his
father, had drifted off to no one knew where. This to me was the
saddest news of all; Jeff had been the object of my first case of hero