Cheadle came through the curtained doorway and, without glancing at the prostrate Bowen, opened a wall-cabinet, took out his thick spectacles, and donned them. Then, as he took a step, he stumbled over Bowen’s feet. Catching at the wall to save himself from falling, he dislodged the wall-cabinet and sent a shower of toilet articles over the floor.
Mr. Oliver Hazard Perry Cheadle cursed heartily and fluently. He even kicked the man from Tonopah in the ribs, but Bowen merely grunted and kept his eyes closed. Then Cheadle passed back into the next room.
“Two o’clock, eh?” he repeated surlily. “Sure we’ll be clear by then?”
“Leave that part of it to me,” said Henderson sharply. “We’ll be clear. But be sure to have the trick turned at two sharp! That ’ll give Dickover plenty of time to find the report is true, and to unload. I want to see him get a crimp, the big toad!”
“Then at two she busts,” said Cheadle. “And hurry back here with the lunch. I’m getting hungry.”
Cheadle grunted and a door slammed behind him.
Bowen lay motionless, his head twisted so that he could idly survey the wreckage caused by Cheadle’s stumble. This final move of Henderson’s had removed his last hope. At three o’clock that afternoon Apex Crown would be known to all men as worthless—and the Apex Crown would be the property of Bob Bowen, of Tonopah!
But it was Alice Ferguson that Bowen was chiefly thinking. Whose fault but his that her little patrimony would be wiped out?
VIII—THE SMASH OF APEX CROWN.
Slowly anger uprose again in Bowen’s soul. After all, the disaster that was upon him and upon Alice Ferguson was not primarily his own fault! It was due to the machinations, the fraud and trickery of Henderson.