At any other time Barnes would have been bored by such confidences as
these. Now he was eagerly drinking in every word that Peter uttered.
His lively brain was putting the whole situation into a nutshell.
Assuming that Peter was not the most guileful person on earth, it was
quite obvious that he not only was in ignorance of the true state of
affairs at Green Fancy but that he was to be banished from the place
while still in that condition.
Long before they came to the turnpike, Barnes had reduced his hundred
and one suppositions to the following concrete conclusion: Green Fancy
was no longer in the hands of its original owner for the good and
sufficient reason that Mr. Curtis was dead. The real master of the
house was the man known as Loeb. Through O'Dowd he had leased the
property from the widowed daughter-in-law, and had established himself
there, surrounded by trustworthy henchmen, for the purpose of carrying
out some dark and sinister project.
Putting two and two together, it was easy to determine how and when
O'Dowd decided to cast his fortunes with those of the leader in this
mysterious enterprise. Their intimacy undoubtedly grew out of
association at the time of the Balkan Wars.
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