“Hold on a minute. I got an idea that I think’ll help a bit. I’ve been thinking of it all day and if I’m not mistaken it’ll land your man or your woman neater and easier than lying in wait for them outside where they know by this time we’ve got a guard.”
Rawson turned back into the room:
“Let’s hear it—we want to clear this up to-night. But, Mr. Bassett, you go on. Stop and tell Patrick what you’re doing and see that he’s on the job. I’ll be down with him later, unless Williams’ idea opens up something new.”
Bassett took the revolver and stepped out of the window.
The night was muffling dark; beyond the long squares of light the windows cast, it lay a velvet blackness, the murmurs of the falling tide issuing from it as if it had a voice which was whispering its secrets.
The outside darkness had a reflex on his own soul. As his body moved forward into its shadowless density, his spirit sank deeper into an enshrouding gloom. He saw Anne in a circling whirlpool, being sucked nearer and nearer to the vortex. She knew Joe had never gone, had connived at his concealment, had lied to them at every turn—accessory after the fact. If they got the boy there was no way of extricating her and it was impossible that they should not get him, held here, all means of escape cut off. To-night, at the latest to-morrow, Joe would be haled before them. He thought of anything he could do, any wild act within the compass of human daring and ingenuity, and could find nothing.
He reached the boat-house and groped his way about it to find Patrick. Coming round the angle where the man was stationed he pronounced his name and was surprised to get no answer. He stretched a feeling hand which came in contact with a large warm bulk, immovable under his touch and giving forth a sound of heavy regular breathing. His own breathing stifled, his movements noiseless as a cat’s, he struck a match and sheltering it with his curved hand, held it out. In its glow he saw Patrick huddled on the bench, his shoulders braced against the wall, his head drooped forward in profound sleep.
He dropped the match and put his foot on it. With the extinguishing of its tiny gleam the darkness closed blacker than before and he had to feel for the wall behind him, drawing close against it. The thought of his trust rose hazy in the hinterlands of his mind like the memory of some distant state of being in which he once had existed.
Pressed against the wall, he calculated the distances about him. The approach to the causeway was to his right, an incline of rocky steps, and in the stillness he could hear the lightest foot descending them. On such a night Joe might venture again—would venture if his nerve still held. If he did it would be within the next hour, and if Patrick slept and Rawson did not come he would go by unchallenged.
A fitful breeze arose, carrying sea odors. He saw the lights in the house go out, and the darkness close, solid and even, over where they had been. He heard the murmurings of the tide growing lower, fainter, till they sunk to silence and he knew the bed of the channel was uncovered.