Then came the end, as sooner or later in crooked plans it must come–Failure! They all fail,–it is inevitable,–at last. The wrong-doer faced the necessity of flight.
Grandall's defalcations in the bank did not appear at once. A small matter–the "padding" or falsely increasing of some petty bills for material furnished the city–had started an investigation. It was to the amazement of everyone who knew the man that a long, long chain of shady operations and even petty stealing, even the robbery of his own friends, was by slow degrees uncovered.
Toward the last, it was apparent, Grandall had been driven to the most painful desperation. Night and day he must be on guard to keep his deceptions covered up. Constantly he must devise new practices in deceit to conceal others that once had served, but now, daily and hourly, were opening at most unexpected points revealing the treachery, falsehood, hypocrisy and rottenness they erstwhile had secreted.
Like a common thief, the guilty Grandall stole away in the night. Behind him he left all that might have made life useful and pleasant–home, friends, hope and ambition. Lying for some time hidden in a distant city, he at last felt it safe to travel by a circuitous route to Opal Lake.
At a country railroad station he stepped quietly off the train. With no luggage but a small handbag he slipped into the woods. A long tramp brought him the following day to the abandoned clubhouse. The very atmosphere of oppressive loneliness there pleased him because of its assurance of his safety from discovery.
How little Grandall guessed, or even suspected, that at just this time he could not have come to a place more fraught with danger to himself will never be known. No knowledge had he of the eyes that stealthily watched him. No thought had he that the moment he appeared with the stolen suit-case in hand, ready to slip away to hoped-for safety in a distant country, a lurking enemy would leap upon him.
The thief sat for a long time contemplating the ruins where so abruptly the road building had ended. It was not until near evening that he strolled slowly toward the clubhouse. The general course of the gravel drive he followed, but in the main kept a few feet to one side, that the trees and brush might screen him.
He had no fear here, yet he knew some boys were in camp not far away and not even by them did he wish to be observed. For he would spend one night of rest in the clubhouse room that once had been his own; and then he would be away–gone for all time from these and all the scenes of his younger life.
Yet a pair of heavy, scowling eyes watched Grandall's every footstep–saw him enter the clubhouse–saw him seat himself restfully in the empty living-room beside the great fireplace and proceed to make a supper of sandwiches and fruit from his small satchel.
Murky could not have been more vigilant had his own life been at stake. Not only his determination to gain again the stolen money that had been taken from him, but his hatred of that person the victim of whose double-dealing he had been, made him watchful, and a very dangerous man.