"He was not among the lot that came out of the coach."
"He certainly was not."
"I thought when he did not get back to his seat beside me, he had lost his nerve and gone inside."
"So did I."
"Well, then?" concluded Gontran.
But the puzzle thus propounded was beyond Hector's powers of solution. He scratched the back of his head by way of trying to extract thence a key to the enigma.
"We must have left him behind," he suggested.
"He would have shouted after us if we had," commented Gontran. "Unless——" he added with graphic significance.
Hector shook himself like a dog who has come out of the water. The terror of those footpads and of those pistols clicking in the dark, unpleasantly close to his head, was still upon him.
"You don't think——" he murmured through chattering teeth.