“You’re a sight!” she sneered. “And I bet they catch you!”
“What’s the matter with you, Elsie?” he demanded.
“Nothing—oh, nothing,” she replied hastily, but already she had decided that she was through with Ed Tower.
The man came out of his hiding place and lifted a suitcase from the rear of his car. But he did not think to ask Elsie Fishberry for the key, and here he made a mistake which he was to regret bitterly later on.
He trudged along up the path to the house, afraid to hurry lest someone see him and suspect him. If he walked along like an ordinary old peddler, nobody would think anything about him.
But once inside the house, he did not loiter a minute. Opening up his suitcase, he took out great wads of cotton waste which had been previously soaked in oil. These he piled under the huge wooden staircase, and applied a match. As the rags burst into flames he hurriedly left the house, carefully closing the door behind him.
Before he had reached the road he could see the smoke pouring through the chimney of the fireplace, and out of the broken kitchen window. There was no doubt that he had succeeded in setting the house on fire, no doubt that it would burn to the ground. By to-morrow the news would have reached the papers. On Wednesday he ought to be able to go to the Trust Company in Chicago and collect that money which was his father’s small fortune. For now at last the officials would be assured that Henry Adolph Tower’s will could never be found.
He chuckled to himself with satisfaction as he reached the road and looked about for his car. But that chuckle abruptly changed to an oath as he failed to see it. It was gone! Elsie Fishberry had double-crossed him, and had run away!
For a few minutes he stood there in the road, hoping that she was only playing a practical joke upon him, and that she would suddenly drive into sight. But as the time passed he gave up hoping, and snatching off his wig and his beard, he flung them, with his linen coat, into the bushes, and started on his five-mile hike to the station.