For a moment Captain Francis Newcombe remained motionless, listening; then with extreme caution he went forward again. He came presently to where the path ended at the edge of a small clearing; and here, though shadowy and indistinct, he could make out just in front of him the outline of what looked like a little cabane, or hut. He nodded his head complacently. From inside the hut he caught the sound of movement again. So this was where Mr. Marlin went at nights, was it!
He crept forward on hands and knees now, careful to make not the slightest noise, made the circuit of the little hut, and halted again—this time on the side opposite from the door and beneath the single window that the place possessed. From what he had been able to make out in the darkness, the hut appeared to be in a more or less tumble-down and neglected condition. It was probably an old tool house or something of the sort. Well, that mattered very little!
With his head well at one side of the window frame to guard against any possibility of being seen from within, he brought his eyes to a level with the sill, and peered in. At first he could distinguish nothing; then gradually a shadowy figure took form in one corner and kept moving up and down with a motion, which, more than anything else that suggested itself to him, resembled the motion of a woman assiduously at work over a washboard. This was accompanied by a scraping sound.
Mr. Marlin was digging!
Captain Francis Newcombe quietly sat down on the ground beneath the window. It was quite hopeless to expect to see anything more than he had seen—for the present! One would have asked a good deal to have asked more! The spot where the old maniac was at work was close up against the wall at the right of the door and almost directly opposite the window!
The digging ceased. Another sound took its place—a sort of crooning, a sing-song droning sound. Words, snatches of sentences, became audible:
"... All! All here! ... In the darkness where no one can see.... And I do not need to see—I feel.... Night after night I feel, and my fingers count.... Money! Money! ... Ha, ha—and they do not understand.... Fools! All fools! ... You will multiply yourself a hundred, a thousandfold.... Fools! Blind fools! ... They would not listen.... They called me mad...."
The crooning went on.
Captain Francis Newcombe with cool nonchalance made himself more comfortable now by propping his back against the side of the hut. When the old fool was through with his puling, and the fondling of that half million in banknotes that he imagined was so safely hidden, the next move would be in order. Until then there was nothing to do except to exercise what degree of patience he could.
Patience! He stirred suddenly. Why exercise patience? Was it, after all, absolutely necessary that he should? A moment's work would do away with that senile old idiot now. Mr. Marlin would be found, but the money would not be found. That was the plan in its actual essence, wasn't it?