The thing was done. I came to myself to find my fingers toying with the pencil, and my thoughts soaring far away. In spite of the grim record of death already made, the deadly precedent that had been set, in spite of all the dictates of ordinary intelligence, I knew what my future course would be. The lure of gold had hold of me. As soon as the opportunity offered, I was going to follow the thing through to its end, and see with my own eyes that which lay hidden in the depths of the lagoon.
CHAPTER XXII
Just before the dinner hour I met Slatterly on the lower floor, and we had a moment’s talk together. “You’ve been in on most everything that’s happened around here,” he said. “You might as well be with us to-night. We’re going to watch the lagoon.”
The truth was I had made other plans for this evening—plans that included Edith Nealman—so I made no immediate answer. The official noticed my hesitancy, and of course misunderstood.
“Speak right up, if you don’t want to do it,” he said, not unkindly. The sheriff was a man of human sympathies, after all. “I wouldn’t hold it against any man living if he didn’t want to sit out there in the dark watching—after what’s happened the last three nights. I don’t know that I’d do it myself if it wasn’t in line of duty.”
“I don’t think I’d be afraid,” I told him.
“It isn’t a question of being afraid. It’s simply a matter of human make-up. To tell the truth, I’m afraid myself—and I’m not ashamed of it. More than once I’ve had to conquer fear in my work. A man who ain’t afraid, one time or another, hasn’t any imagination. Some men are cold as ice, I’ve had deputies that were—and they wouldn’t mind this a bit. I know, Killdare, that you’d come in a pinch. Any man here, I think—any white man—would be down there with me to-night if something vital—some one’s life or something—depended on it. But I don’t want to take any one that it will be hard for, that—that is any one to whom it would be a real ordeal. I’m picking my bunch with some care.”
“Who is going?”