“And rouse them up at this hour of the night? It’s getting on to be eleven o’clock. And it would be a pretty reason to give, wouldn’t it: ‘If you please, Mr. Burton, we invited a convict to spend the night with us, and now we’re afraid.’”
Eva couldn’t resist smiling at Roy’s way of putting it.
Rex yawned heavily.
“I’m awfully sleepy,” he said.
“Yes; and you and Rex were the ones who were to stand guard,” Jess reminded him promptly.
“Well, I’m beginning to agree with Eva now,” Rex returned. “I haven’t an idea that man intends to harm any of us. Perhaps there is some mistake after all and he isn’t Martin Blakesley, only somebody that looks like him.”
“I don’t go to bed on any such uncertainty as that,” declared Jess.
“What would we do if we stayed up and we heard him coming down stairs to burglarize the house?” Rex wanted to know.
“If you and Roy weren’t shaking in your boots too much to take aim you might bring him to a halt by pointing Syd’s pistol at his head.”
“I suppose we could ask him to wait first till we ran up to Syd’s bureau drawer and got it,” retorted Rex with fine irony.