It's funny, though--There's not a trace of mud or
dust on this; and even the food inside wasn't jostled about by
the tumble. That curve is paying us big dividends, lately. It's a
pity no bullion trucks pass this way. Still, parasols and picnic
lunches aren't to be sneered at."
Lad was standing in the study doorway, eyes alight, tail waving.
The Master called him over and petted him; praising this newest
accomplishment of his, and prophesying untold wealth for the
Place if the graft should but continue long enough.
There was something pathetic in dear old Laddie's pleasure over
the new trick he had learned; or so it seemed to the two people
who loved him. And they continued to flatter him for it;--even
when, among other trophies, he dragged home a pickaxe momentarily
laid aside by a road mender; and an extremely dead chicken which
a motor-truck wheel had flattened to waferlike thickness.
Which brings us, by degrees to the Rennick kidnaping case.
Claude Rennick, a New York artist of considerable means, had
rented for the summer an ancient Colonial farmhouse high among
the Ramapo hills; some six miles north of the Place, There, he
and his pretty young wife and their six-months-old baby had been
living for several weeks; when, angered at a sharp rebuke for
some dereliction in his work, Schwartz, their gardener, spoke
insultingly to Mrs.
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