When Pedders showed up again all the old stories was hashed over, and the whole of Tullington held its breath watchin' for some sign that he's dug up his hank loot. But it didn't come. Pedders just camped down silent in his old home and let his whiskers grow. Twice a day he made reg'lar trips back and forth from the postoffice, lookin' at nobody, speakin' to nobody. Mrs. Pedders held her usual fall and spring openin's of freak millinery, while Luella taught in the fourth grade of the grammar school and gave a few piano lessons on the side. They didn't act like a fam'ly that had buried treasure.
But what had he done with that hundred and fifty thousand? How could he have blown so much without even acquirin' a toddy blossom? Or had he scattered it in the good old way, buckin' Wall Street? But he'd never seemed like that kind. No, they didn't think he had the nerve to take a chance on a turkey raffle. So that left the mystery deeper'n ever.
"No chance of him bein' not guilty to begin with, eh?" I suggests.
J. Bayard smiles cynical. "So far as I am able to learn," says he, "there is just one person, aside from Mrs. Pedders and her daughter, who believes him innocent. Strangely enough too, that's Norris, who was teller at the time. He's president of the bank now. I had a talk with him this morning. He insists that Pedders was too honest to touch a dollar; says he knew him too well. But he offers no explanation as to where the securities went. So there you are! Everyone else regards him as a convicted thief, who scarcely got his just deserts. He's a social outcast, and a broken, spiritless wretch besides. How can I do anything kind and generous for such a man?"
Well, I didn't know any more'n he did. "What gets me," I goes on, "is how he ever come to be mixed up with Pyramid Gordon. Got that traced out?"
"I sounded Norris on that point," says Steele; "but he'd never heard of Gordon's having been in Tullington, and was sure Pedders didn't know him."
"Then you ain't had a talk with Pedders himself?" says I.
"Why, no," says J. Bayard, shruggin' his shoulders scornful. "The poor devil! I didn't see what good it would do--an ex-convict, and----"
"You can't always be dealin' with Twombley-Cranes," I breaks in. "And it's Pedders you're after this trip. Come on. Let's go tackle him."