Nothing unusual had happened in his absence, nor had any other message or warning been posted, for Stryker, released for this duty, had searched all the morning and found nothing. "Hawk" was waiting, biding his hour.
Curiously enough, an astonishing calm seemed to have fallen over the person of Jonathan K. McGuire. When Peter arrived he found his employer seated on the portico in a wicker chair, smoking his after-supper cigar. True, the day guards were posted near by and Stryker hovered as was his wont, but the change in his employer's demeanor was so apparent that Peter wondered how such a stolid-looking creature could ever have lost his self-control. It was difficult to understand this metamorphosis unless it could be that, having come to a decision and aware of the prospect of immunity, if only a temporary one, McGuire had settled down to make the best of a bad job and await with stoicism whatever the future was to bring. This was Peter's first impression, nothing else suggesting itself, but when he followed the old man up to his room and gave him the money he had brought he noted the deeply etched lines at nostril and jaw and felt rather than saw the meaning of them—that Jonathan McGuire was in the grip of some deep and sinister resolution. There was a quality of desperation in his calmness, a studied indifference to the dangers which the night before last had seemed so appalling.
He put the money in the safe, carefully locked the combination and then turned into the room again.
"Thanks, Nichols," he said. "You'd better have some supper and get to bed to-night. I don't think you'll be needed." And then, as Peter's look showed his surprise, "I know my man better than you do. To-morrow night we shall see."
He closed his lips into a thin line, shot out his jaw and lowered his brows unpleasantly. Courage of a sort had come back to him, the courage of the animal at bay, which fights against the inevitable.
To Peter the time seemed propitious to state the need for the observation towers and he explained in detail his projects. But McGuire listened and when Peter had finished speaking merely shook his head.
"What you say is quite true. The towers must be built. I've thought so for a long time. In a few days we will speak of that again—after to-morrow night," he finished significantly.
"As you please," said Peter, "but every day lost now may——"
"We'll gain these days later," he broke in abruptly. "I want you to stay around here now."
On Friday morning he insisted on having Peter show him the tree where the placard had been discovered, and Peter, having taken lunch with him, led him down to the big sugar maple, off the path to the cabin. Peter saw that he scanned the woods narrowly and walked with a hand in his waist-band, which Peter knew held an Army Colt revolver, but the whine was gone from his voice, the trembling from his hands. He walked around the maple with Peter, regarding it with a sort of morbid abstraction and then himself led the way to the path and to the house. Why he wanted to look at the tree was more than Peter could understand, for it was Peter, and not he, who was to keep this costly assignation.