The evening meal out of the way, Barzy Blunt went off to spend the evening with Mrs. Boorland, Clancy and Ballard got into a game of checkers in the hotel office, and Merry went upstairs to his room.
Frank was pestering himself with the question of that cyanide clean-up, and the gold in the laboratory safe which Lenning was to guard. When he had first heard of the clean-up and the gold, he had made up his mind to stroll out to the Ophir workings during the evening, and sort of reconnoiter the situation at the cyanide plant. Later, he had decided that such an act would be foolish, and would show his distrust of Lenning. Now he was again wondering if he had not better go to the mine.
He recalled that he had told Mr. Bradlaugh that he would be responsible for the way Lenning did his duty. Suppose, on the first night of his work, Lenning should yield to temptation and run off with a few bars of bullion? Frank’s promise to the general manager would oblige him to go down in his pocket and make good the mining company’s loss.
Frank could not believe that Lenning would do such a thing. He believed that the fellow was honestly trying to retrieve his good name. Reformation comes slow, however, and is not secured at a single jump. Guarding bullion was a pretty hard position in which to place a fellow like Lenning, on the very first night of his work. His newly formed resolution would be put to a hard test.
Merriwell’s mind revolved around the subject until it began to get on his nerves. At last he jumped up and began pulling off his coat.
“I’ll go batty over this if I don’t get it out of my mind somehow,” he muttered. “Maybe if I go to bed I can sleep and forget it.”
He began to unlace one of his shoes, paused, then laced it up again.
“I don’t believe I could sleep, anyhow,” he grumbled. “The quickest way to get this out of my system is to do a little reconnoitering around that blooming cyanide plant.”
He looked at a tin clock which hung from a nail in the wall. The hands indicated a quarter past nine.
“I can get back here by eleven,” he thought, “and have plenty of time to look around at the mine. Clancy will wonder where I am, I suppose, but what he doesn’t know hadn’t ought to trouble him. Here goes.”