“Hold your hosses!” he cried. A crisp note of authority was in his voice. “Why, old fellow, this is just what I’ve been waiting for.”
“Indeed!” Saxe exclaimed, with sarcasm. Then, he shrugged his shoulders resignedly. He found himself fairly bemused by this madness on the part of his friends.
“It’s this way,” David went on. His manner proved that, however extravagant in his credulity, he was quite sincere. “I’ve been about more than a bit with Roy, and in some infernally tough places, too, let me tell you.” Saxe nodded assent. “Well, the fact of the matter is simply this: From experience, I’ve learned that, when Roy has a hunch, it goes—that’s all. He has sensed things, as he calls it, and our acting on the knowledge we got in that way has saved our lives—more than once—so, here, I’ve been waiting for his sixth sense to get busy, and it has, at last. I was beginning to get discouraged. Now, everything’s all right. Roy’s got his hunch.”
Before Saxe could voice utter disbelief in a trust so fantastic, he was interrupted by Roy himself. That intermittent seer, who had been smoking with an expression of infantile contentment on his face, sprang lithely and noiselessly to his feet. While Saxe and David stared curiously, he leaned close to them, and whispered:
“There’s somebody listening. Look out of the window, Saxe.”
Roy had been sitting for some time with his back to the one window in the room, while the other two had been facing it. There had come no sound from without. Now, instinctively obedient to the command, Saxe darted to the window, which was open, and thrust out his head. Close to the wall of the cottage, within a yard of him, stood Hartley Masters in an attitude of absorbed attention.
Without attracting the notice of the eaves-dropper, Saxe drew back, and turned to his friends. He nodded affirmation of Roy’s surmise. In the gaze with which he scrutinized the amateur psychic, there was a curious commingling of bewilderment, respect and chagrin.
David threw back his head, and laughed joyously, scorning the listener, and spoke his mind:
“When Roy gets a hunch—watch out!”