“Unload it,” said Tregarvon briefly.
“Somebody tried to kill one of us a few minutes ago, and—and I’m afraid Hartridge knew it was due to come off!”
“Nonsense—you’re joking!” Tregarvon had come out of his pipe-musings with a bound.
“I’ll tell you just what happened, and then you shall judge for yourself. You know that stretch of good road about two-thirds of the way up the mountain?—the longest one there is?”
“Yes.”
“Well, just as we turned into it, going up, Hartridge twisted himself in the seat, looked back, and made some sort of a motion with his hand. I was talking; trying to pump him some more; and I don’t know why I should have noticed the bit of pantomime. Neither do I know why, coming down a few minutes later, I should have hit that piece of road at a ten-mile-an-hour gait instead of a thirty or forty. It was mighty lucky I wasn’t speeding. For about two shakes of a dead lamb’s tail you stood to lose a good friend and a twenty-five-hundred-dollar car. There was a tree lying across the road at precisely the correct angle to shoot me out into space if I had hit it.”
“Heavens!” exclaimed the listener. “Done while you were going and coming?”
“Done while I was going and coming. And that tree was lying at the exact spot where Hartridge turned in his seat and made the little signal with his hand to somebody that I couldn’t see.”
“But, good Lord, Poictiers! It’s unbelievable. Why, the man wasn’t ten minutes away from his bread-breaking with us!”
“I can’t help that. You have the facts.”