“What did you do?”
“I stopped, skirmished under the tonneau seat and found your towing rope, and took a hitch on the obstruction. The car was good for it, and I dragged the tree around and rolled it over the embankment. Then I examined the place where it had stood: it had been partly undermined by the road grading, and probably didn’t require much of a push to tip it over.”
“Then it might have been a sheer accident?”
Carfax was shaking his head. “I thought so at first. But when I turned the flash-light on the gap it had left in the upper bank, I saw that it had not fallen accidentally. There are pick marks in the clay, and a crowbar had been thrust in behind the roots to pry with.”
“You didn’t see or hear anybody?”
“Not a sign. I even went so far as to make a circuit in the woods along the upper embankment. There wasn’t a leaf stirring.”
“But think a minute, Poictiers: whatever crazy grudge any one might have against me or the Ocoee, it couldn’t be made to lap over on you!”
“That’s all right; it is your car, and you have usually driven it. You are doubtless the one who had the narrow escape, and I was only your happen-so proxy.”
For a thoughtful half-hour they sat before the dying embers of the fire and discussed the murderous attempt in all its bearings, Tregarvon stoutly maintaining to the last that Hartridge could not possibly have been an accomplice. But disregarding that single slight clue, they were left completely in the dark as to the identity or motive of the man or men who had tried to wreck the car.
In the early stages of the discussion Tregarvon had suggested the McNabbs; and after every other guess had been exhausted he returned to them. But Carfax demurred at this.