“Search me. Everything has been as quiet and peaceable around these diggings as a Sunday-school picnic, right up to now. You say you couldn’t find Lenning?”
“No.”
“You don’t suppose he was the one who came up behind you and——”
“Lenning? Great Scott, no! Why should he want to slam me into the laboratory wall?”
“He didn’t use to be a very warm friend of yours.”
“I know, but things are different, now. You see, I’m helping him to square away and——”
“Yes, yes, I’m next to all that. He wouldn’t have been taken on here, if it hadn’t been for you. I haven’t much use for the fellow, though, even if you have. That’s why I was strolling around the tanks when I ought to have been ‘hitting the hay.’ Thought it was just as well to keep an eye on Lenning for the first few nights. Say, Merriwell,” and the super smothered a laugh as he spoke, “is that why you’re out here to-night?”
“You’re too darned keen, Burke,” laughed Merriwell. “I heard you finished a cyanide clean-up, this afternoon, and were to have some bullion in the laboratory safe for overnight.”
“That’s correct. Four ten-pound bars were locked in the safe about eight o’clock.”
“Well,” Frank proceeded earnestly, “don’t think for a minute that I’m not trusting Lenning. I just happened around to have a talk with him during his first night on duty.”