On the floor beside them lay a full sack. Piled in a corner of the room was a heterogeneous stack of household articles—a clock, a silver candlestick, three gilt picture-frames, a plated soup-tureen, some spoons, and similar loot. Trent had scarce time to note these facts and a heap of empty bottles in another corner, before the smoker had dropped his pipe with a grunt and sprung scramblingly to his feet. The sleeping man, roused by his companion’s noise, sat up and blinked.
“H’m!” mused Trent, as the two stared owlishly at him. “I see. You boys didn’t reckon on my time off for good behaviour, eh? Thought I wasn’t due home for another month or so; and in the meantime this was a dandy place to hide in and to keep the stuff you steal? Clever lads! H’m!”
The two still blinked dully at him. Evidently their density was intensified by the contents of some of the empty bottles lying near the mattress.
“I’m beginning to understand things,” pursued Trent evenly. “You two testified you saw me take away those boxes from Fales’ store. I went to prison on your testimony. You had lived hereabouts all your lives, and there was nothing known against either of you. So your word was good enough to send me up—while you pinched the boxes, and plenty of other things. Since then“—with a glance at the plunder—“you seem to have gone into the business pretty extensively. And you picked the safest place to keep it in. Now, suppose you both——”
He got no further. By tacit consent, the two lurched to their feet and flung themselves upon him.
But, careless as had been his pose and his tone, Trent had not been napping. Even as he spoke, he realised what a stroke of cleverness it would be for the men to overpower him and to claim that they had found him in his own house surrounded by these stolen goods. It would be so easy a way to fix the blame of such recent robberies as had scourged Boone Lake on some unknown accomplice of Trent’s! The craft that had once made them take advantage of his joke on Fales would readily serve them again.
But as they flung themselves on Trent, he was no longer there. In fact, he was nowhere in particular. Also he was everywhere. Agile as a lynx, he was springing aside from their clumsy rush, then dashing in and striking with all his whalebone strength; dodging, blocking, eluding, attacking; all in the same dazzlingly swift set of motions. It was a pretty sight.
A prolonged carouse on raw whisky is not the best training for body or for mind in an impromptu fight. And the two trespassers speedily discovered this. Their man was all over them, yet ever out of reach. Too stupidly besotted to use teamwork, they impeded rather than reinforced each other. Up and down the broad kitchen raged the trio.
Then, ducking a wild swing, Trent darted in and uppercut one of his antagonists. The man’s own momentum, in the swing, added fifty per cent. to the impetus of Trent’s blow. Trent’s left fist caught his enemy flush on the jaw-point. The man’s knees turned to tallow. He slumped to the floor in a huddled heap.