"Only till Monday," Atherton answered. "After that, write me at the Standard Motor Works till further notice. And now I must be getting home; there's no train for two hours if I miss the next one. No hard feeling, Blagden?"
"Not a bit," Blagden answered. "You're quite right. I didn't agree with you at first, but I do now. Good-by and good luck."
His tone was cordiality itself, but when he had regained the street, Atherton began to wonder whether or not his friend was speaking the truth. As Mills had artlessly phrased it, it "didn't sound like" Blagden; Blagden the bold, the tenacious and the daring. "I'll take no chances," he reflected, "I owe him a great deal, as he said, but I can still keep my eyes open." And if he could have looked back into the room he had just left, and could have heard the flood of vituperation which streamed from Blagden's lips, he would have realized the wisdom of his resolve.
CHAPTER XVI
[The Final Effort]
The clock in the village struck two, and Atherton, crouching in the darkness amid the shrubbery on the lawn, hailed with relief the distant coming of daybreak.
Unable, upon reflection, to credit Blagden's sincerity, he had left the employ of Mr. Hamilton on Monday, as agreed, but before beginning work at the factory had asked for, and obtained, a three days' leave of absence. And now, for the third successive evening, he had come to stand guard, trusting that if Blagden tried to carry out his plan, he could at least prevent danger of injury to the inmates of the house.
Between midnight and three o'clock in the morning; this, he had decided, would be the time for any such attempt, for before midnight, the house had scarcely settled down to slumber, and after three the first faint light of the midsummer dawn began to brighten in the sky. The first two nights had passed without incident, and of this, the third and last, only an hour remained; yet Atherton experienced no sense of relaxation from the tension of his vigil, for if the trial was to be made at all, now seemed to him the fitting time. The night was overcast; a fresh damp wind blew from the south; and a veiled moon and scuds of flying cloud portended rain. "If I were a housebreaker," thought Atherton, "I should call this my chance. You couldn't see a man to-night until he was right on top of you--My God, what's that?"
Not twenty feet away from him, a shadowy figure glided, ghost like, through the shrubbery, bent low and travelling so rapidly that before Atherton had time fairly to collect his senses, the man's form was again invisible in the darkness. Atherton's heart-beats quickened. That this was Stoat he had no doubt whatever, and now, for the first time, he realized the difficulties of his task--an unskilled amateur attempting to shadow one of the best professional burglars in New York. Yet whether he liked it or not, the moment for action had come, and acutely conscious of the awkwardness of his movements, he crept as best he could after his predecessor. An open window on the veranda showed him where the thief had entered, and with hammering pulses Atherton followed suit, and automatic in hand crept cautiously up the staircase to the second floor, and at the head of the stairs crouched, listening, in the shadow of the hall. Marshall Hamilton's room lay to the left. Helen's was directly opposite the stairway, and from the right, where Mrs. Hamilton slept, he could hear stifled breathing and an occasional low moan which told him that her malady was at its worst. Far away, at the end of the hall, a single light burned dimly, and presently, without the slightest sound, he saw the housebreaker's sinister and shadowy form coming stealthily, with the same rapid gliding motion, down the hallway toward the stairs. Clearly, thought Atherton, Stoat had accomplished the first part of his mission in safety, and he had just begun to experience a sensation of relief when all at once, to his consternation, came the very sound he had been dreading, the faint tinkle of the bell which connected Mrs. Hamilton's room with her daughter's, and by means of which the elder woman was accustomed to call the younger to her aid. Stoat, too, must have heard it, for he stopped instantly, and for a few breathless moments all was silence. Then the shadowy form once more advanced, and had almost reached the head of the stairs when the door of Helen's room was suddenly thrown open, and the girl, clad in her wrapper, stepped quickly forth into the hall.
What followed occurred with the rapidity of lightning. Simultaneously the girl detected the presence of the housebreaker, and Stoat sprang forward with upraised arm; and in the next fraction of a second--a space too short to permit the use of his revolver--Atherton too had leaped, and the blow of the blackjack, meant for Helen, struck him a glancing blow on the head, and sent him reeling to the floor, while Stoat, at headlong speed, made off down the stairs. Yet he was not to escape scotfree, for through the haze that blinded him, and despite the agony of pain, Atherton contrived to raise himself on one elbow, and steadying himself with a mighty effort, sent a shot down the staircase after the fugitive. Then the lights that flashed before his eyes seemed to recede and to grow faint; darkness descended upon the world; and he fell back unconscious, a creeping trickle of red bearing witness to the power of the burglar's blow.