“Do it anyway,” Tregarvon suggested. “I’ll stand watch, and call you when your turn comes. Take Rucker’s cot.”
“Do you really mean it?”
“Sure I do. Turn in and take your forty winks. If anything seems likely to happen, I’ll let you know.”
“Then I believe I’ll take you at your word. I haven’t been so sleepy since the year before Noah built the ark of gopherwood. If Mrs. Caswell wasn’t as far above suspicion as the angels of light, I might suspect her of having put something into the black coffee.”
Five minutes later Tregarvon was sitting alone on the rope coil, rubbing his eyes and wishing that he might decently follow Carfax’s example. The very act of staring at the moonlit glade hypnotized him, the more since there was nothing unusual to be seen. With the view through the open door becoming hazy and startlingly distinct by turns, he struggled manfully against the rising tide of somnolence, nodding, and recovering himself with a jerk when he realized that the tide was submerging him. But out of one of the nodding moments he came with a violent start that instantly banished all thoughts of sleep. The little screech-owl had ceased complaining, and the arousing sound had been the distinct clink of metal upon stone.
When he looked he saw that the time for action had come. Standing fairly in the midst of the small clearing, the drill derrick was struck out boldly in the white moonlight, with every outline and detail sharply distinguishable. In the square of cleaned rock surface marked off by the four legs of the derrick frame Tregarvon saw a man crouching. The clinking noise was repeated and the watcher at the door faced about and felt his way in the inner darkness to the bed in the corner of the tool-room.
“Wake up, Poictiers!” he called in low tones; “the play has begun!”
Carfax sat up promptly and asked but a moment for the finding of himself. “I’m all here,” he said. “What’s doing?”
For answer Tregarvon led him to the door and pointed to the square of bared bed-rock under the derrick frame. There was a man there, without doubt, but now he was standing up and was apparently examining something which lay in the palm of his hand. The sudden rush of the two from the tool shanty was quite evidently a surprise for the intruder, but he made no attempt to escape. So far from it, he lifted his soft hat politely and said: “Good evening again, gentlemen. You took me completely by surprise—as perhaps you meant to. I was quite sure that you were both safely in bed in Coalville by this time.”
“No,” said Carfax very gently. “We have not been in Coalville at all: we have been here, waiting, quite patiently for—you, Mr. Hartridge.”