Tregarvon winced. “I have a cracked skull, I think, and an ankle that won’t let me get up. But about that gunshot; I didn’t fire at you; I shot into the air to make you stop. Just the same, you gave me a quick fit of the horrors. When you yelled, I thought I had inadvertently killed you. What made you run?”
The professor’s smile was a little rueful, and also a little shamefaced.
“My heavens!” gasped the discoverer; and a voice,
apparently at his elbow, said: “Quite so.”
“What made you chase me?” he asked.
“Because I was hot—fighting mad. I wanted to drag you to an accounting on the spot. I don’t suppose you will be foolish enough to deny that you set the leaf fire that caused the explosion?”
“Since I was near enough to be blown up myself such a denial might have the weight of circumstantial evidence to support it,” was the quiet reply. “But I do not make the denial. It was I who set the leaves afire. I shall be greatly relieved if you can tell me that nobody was injured.”
“So far as I know the dynamite didn’t kill any of us. But tell me, did you start that fire knowing that the explosion would follow?”
“By no means. I may confess that I knew the dynamite had been placed; but I supposed, as the most ordinary matter of course, that your men had taken care of it when they captured their prisoner.”
“Then why did you light the fire?”