The watchers saw now that it was a suit case of the stoutest leather, bought, doubtless, for the purpose, but looking considerably the worse for wear, as a result of its burial.
After a great deal of effort, the far-from-athletic Simpson succeeded in hoisting it into the coupé. Would he fill up the hole now and close the garage, or was there more to follow?
Obviously there was more, for after some further digging and a lot of sighs and mutterings, a second suit case, somewhat smaller, was dragged out and deposited in the car.
“That must be all of it,” thought Green Eye. “Eighty thousand dollars in gold doesn’t weigh a ton or fill a coffin.”
He was right. At any rate, Simpson’s actions quickly convinced them that he did not intend to remove anything more that night. He looked apprehensively in the direction of the house, and reëntered the garage, where, for some minutes, he again busied himself with the spade.
He was filling in the hole. The clash was about due now.
Gordon had an inspiration. He had been wondering how Simpson had previously concealed the freshly turned earth, or how he meant to do so now.
“I’ll bet he has it fixed so that the excavation appears to have been made for the purpose of sinking one of those underground gasoline tanks!” he told himself. “Very likely he’s got the whole paraphernalia there, and the tank is actually in the ground. That’s what I would have done under the circumstances, at any rate.”
As a matter of fact, his guess proved to be a singularly accurate one, for that was just the blind to which Simpson had resorted.