"I was sure of it," said Ballard, quietly. "I knew that in all human probability you would be the next victim. That is why I persuaded Bromley to let me take his place in the motor-car. If the car hadn't broken down, I should have been here in time to warn you. I suppose it isn't necessary to ask who tripped you?"
The playwright rocked his head on the pillow.
"I'm afraid not, Ballard. The man who afterward saved my life—so they all say—was the one who stood nearest to me at the moment. The 'why' is what is tormenting me. I'm not the Arcadia Company, or its chief engineer, or anybody in particular in this game of 'heads I win, and tails you lose.'"
Ballard left his chair and walked slowly to the mountain-viewing window. When he returned to the bedside, he said: "I can help you to the 'why.' What you said in my office to-day to three of us was overheard by a fourth—and the fourth was Manuel. An hour or so later he came up this way, on foot. Does that clear the horizon for you?"
"Perfectly," was the whispered response, followed by a silence heavy with forecastings.
"Under the changed conditions, it was only fair to you to bring you your warning, and to take off the embargo on your leaving Castle 'Cadia. Of course, you'll get yourself recalled to New York at once?" said Ballard.
Wingfield raised himself on one elbow, and again his lips parted in the grinning smile.
"Not in a thousand years, Ballard. I'll see this thing out now, if I get killed regularly once a day. You say I mustn't write about it, and that's so. I'm not a cad. But the experience is worth millions to me—worth all the chances I'm taking, and more. I'll stay."
Ballard gripped the womanish hand lying on the coverlet. Here, after all, and under all the overlayings of pose and craftsman egotism, was a man with a man's heart and courage.
"You're a brave fool, Wingfield," he said, warmly; "and because you are brave and a man grown, you shall be one of us. We—Bromley and I—bluffed you to-day for a woman's sake. If you could have got away from the excitement of the man-hunt for a single second, I know your first thought would have been for the woman whose lifted finger silences three of us. Because you seemed to forget this for the moment, I knocked you down with your own theory. Does that clear another of the horizons for you?"