“Yes, I think so,” answered Dunn. “It was a long time before I could hit on the right move, but I managed it at last, I think.”
“Come and show me, then,” said Deede Dawson, bustling back into his room and beginning to set up the pieces on his travelling chess-board. “This was the position, wasn't it? Now, what's your move?”
Dunn showed him, and Deede Dawson burst into a laugh that had in it for once a touch of honest enjoyment.
“Yes, that would do it, but for one thing you haven't noticed,” he said. “Black can push the pawn at KB7 and make it, not a queen, but a knight, giving check to your king and no mate for you next move.”
“Yes, that's so,” agreed Dunn. “I hadn't thought of that.”
“Unexpected, eh? Making the pawn a knight?” smiled Deede Dawson. “But in chess, and in life, it's the unexpected you have to look out for.”
“That's quite an aphorism,” said Dunn. “It's true, too.”
He went up to bed, but did not sleep well, and when at last he fell into a troubled slumber, it seemed to him that Charley Wright and John Clive were there, one on each side of him, and that they had come, not because they sought for vengeance, but because they wished to warn him of a doom like their own that they could see approaching but he could not.
Toward's morning he got an hour's sound rest, and he was down stairs in good time. He did not see Ella, but he heard her moving about, so knew that she was safe as yet; and Deede Dawson gave him some elaborate parting instructions, a little money, and a loaded revolver.
“I don't know that I want that,” said Dunn. “My hands will be all I need once I'm face to face with Rupert Dunsmore.”