“You can’t yourself account for his coming back?”
Again Mr. Coburn hesitated.
“Not with any certainty,” he said at last, then with a grimace he continued: “But I’m a little afraid that it’s perhaps Madeleine.”
Bulla, the engineer, made a sudden gesture.
“I thought so,” he exclaimed. “Even in the little I saw of them this evening I thought there was something in the wind. I guess that accounts for the whole thing. What do you say, skipper?”
The big man nodded.
“I should think so,” he admitted, with a look of relief. “I think it’s a mare’s nest, Coburn. I don’t believe we need worry.”
“I’m not so sure,” Coburn answered slowly. “I don’t think we need worry about Merriman, but I’m hanged if I know what to think about Hilliard. He’s pretty observant, and there’s not much about this place that he hasn’t seen at one time or another.”
“All the better for us, isn’t it?” Bulla queried.
“So far as it goes, yes,” the manager agreed, “and I’ve stuffed him with yarns about costs and about giving up the props and going in for paving blocks and so on which I think he swallowed. But why should he want to know what we are doing? What possible interest can the place have for him—unless he suspects?”