Dazed, powerless, speechless, those on the lake helplessly witnessed the awful tragedy. With straining eyes and ears they watched and listened; but there came now no sound above the fitful roar and crackle of the fire and the surging wind.
Within a minute the roof of the clubhouse went down. The whole interior of the building followed, and where had stood the old house on the Point there remained only the walls of flaming logs, the mass of debris and the wreckage of wrecked lives that rapidly burned within them.
"You know what's in that bag he threw down to the water?" the golfing man asked. It was in the midst of the exclamation and words of awe of those who saw the terrible scene enacted, that the question was asked of Anderson. The Swede nodded.
"And you?" said the stranger, turning to Phil as spokesman for the boys.
"Yes, we know. We know the whole story. We–we thought you were–We saw you about the clubhouse and we got it into our heads that you were–Was it really Grandall that we saw on the balcony?"
"Thought I was Grandall?" muttered the man, mystified. "Why should you? Did you know he was in the woods? For I did not. But it was Lewis Grandall and no other that went to his death before our very eyes! The man with him–Murky was the name you used? Who was he?"
"Then you don't know the whole story of the robbery?" exclaimed Billy Worth. "Murky was the man Grandall got to go through the motions of robbing him of the twenty thousand dollars in the first place!"
It was with great interest, indeed, that Mr. Beckley heard the complete account of Grandall's double-dealing scheme as Chip Slider and the Auto Boys had gathered the information.
Meanwhile there had come with the wind fitful dashes of rain that soon settled itself to a steady downpour. The forest fire had nearly burned itself out on the lake's south shore. Thousands of acres of smoldering ruins lay in its wake. Yet for a long time the refugees huddled upon the raft, protecting themselves from the storm as best they could with blankets and bedding. Not yet was it safe to venture ashore.
It was during this period that the golfing man made known his own identity and told why he happened to be hiding in the old clubhouse, resulting quite naturally, he freely admitted, in his being taken for the fugitive treasurer of the Longknives.