"Suppose you are getting too close to the truth of who killed Simon Varr—or suppose the murderer thinks you are, which comes to the same thing. He doesn't care for the idea—not a-tall. So he has a happy inspiration and plots this scenario as you have described it—only to draw an anticlimax. You were supposed to do the chasing. Naturally he couldn't foresee that your guardian angel, the unfortunate me, would come galloping down here and spring his trap.
"What if it had been you who was slumbering peacefully in the middle of the path instead of me? Would you ever have awakened again? Or would you now be sitting somewhere on a cloud talking it all over with Simon? How's that for a theory?"
"You think he'd have stuck a knife in me? I must admit there is a nasty air of plausibility about your sketch." The detective mused a moment. "There's one consolation if it's true; it's mighty complimentary—almost flattering—to my ability!"
He stood up and rescued his torch from its resting-place in the tree. As he took it down, its beam was deflected briefly along the trail, and in that instant he uttered a quick exclamation.
"Look there!" he snapped. "What's that?"
XXI: Twilight
Krech came to attention at the detective's exclamation and his eyes followed the ray of light from the torch as Creighton directed it to a point on the ground scarcely two yards from their feet. An oblong, flat package wrapped in brown paper lay in the trail. They dove for it together and Creighton secured it, properly enough, since the flash-light revealed his name on the face of it, scrawled in the same uncouth writing that they had seen before on the anonymous communication of the monk to Simon Varr.
"What's in it?" demanded Krech, and added a trifle anxiously, "It doesn't tick, does it?"
"That cropper you came evidently hasn't hurt your imagination," chuckled the detective as he loosened the coarse string about the package. "No, it isn't a bomb. It's—well, by golly, will you look at what it is!"