“Do the best you can, that’s all.”
“Gee-wollops! I’m so narvous I feel as though I wanted to yell. But go on. I’ll stay here.”
Clancy had been pulling off his shoes. Fortune did not have to tell him what disagreeable consequences would follow if he crawled into Judge Pembroke’s house and failed to find Hibbard and Long Tom there. Clancy’s imagination was good enough to picture his plight in such a condition of affairs. But, nevertheless, he was determined to go in.
Carefully he placed his hands on the sill, drew himself upward and wriggled through into the darkness of the room beyond. Fortune had many tremors as he watched his pard vanish.
“By glory,” said Jimmie to himself, as he crouched downward and made himself as small as possible, “Red has got a heap more nerve than me. I don’t allow I could do a thing like that, noways.”
As for Owen, whenever he made up his mind that it was necessary to do a thing, he banked on his judgment and did it. He might be wrong. If he was, he could explain to the judge.
Once inside the room with the open window, Clancy found himself in surroundings totally unfamiliar. And he dared not strike a light for fear of betraying himself—not only to Hibbard and Long Tom, but also to the judge’s household. Either might spell disaster for him.
As he stood in the gloom, he recalled as distinctly as possible, the diagram which Hibbard had drawn for Chantay Seeche Long. He wished, then, that he had paid more attention to that rude drawing.
As near as he could remember, this room had two doors, one in the front wall and another in the rear. If he was right, through which of those doors had Hibbard and Long Tom passed?
He reflected that they would not go toward the front of the house, providing they could get what they were after by keeping more to the rear of the building.