“I can trust my intuitions, or I can trust the circumstantial evidence,” thought the colonel. He jumped up and began to pace the court.
“Seems to be like a game of bridge before one can see the dummy,” he complained; and as so often happens in the crises of life, a trivial illustration struck a wavering mind with the force of an argument. His thoughts reverted whimsically to the card-table; how many times had he hesitated over the first lead between evenly balanced suits of four; and how often had he regretted or won, depending solely upon whether his card instinct had been denied or obeyed! It might be instinct, this much-discussed “card instinct,” or it might be a summing up of logical deductions so swift that the obscure steps were lost, and the reasoner was unconscious of his own logical processes. “Now,” groaned Rupert Winter, “I am up against it. She looks like a good woman; she seems like a good woman; but I have only my impressions and Aunt Rebecca’s against the apparent facts in the case. Well, Aunt Rebecca is a shrewd one!” He sat down and thought harder. Finally he rose, smiling. He had threshed out his problem; and his conclusion, inaudibly but very distinctly uttered to himself, was: “Me for my own impressions! If that girl is in with this gang, either what they are after isn’t so bad—or they have made her believe it isn’t bad.”
He looked idly about him at the arched doorway of the outer court. It was carved with a favorite mission design of eight-pointed flowers with vase-like fluting below. There was a tiny crack in one of the flowers, the tiniest crack in the world. He looked at it without seeing it, or seeing it with only the outer half of his senses, but—he could not have told how—into his effort to pierce his own tangle there crept a sudden interest, a sudden keenness of scrutiny of this minute, insignificant crack in the stone. He became aware that the crack was singularly regular, preserving the form of the flower and the fluting beneath. Kito, the Japanese, who was sitting at the far end of the court, conversing in amity with Haley, just here rose and came to this particular pillar. The Irishman sat alone, rimmed by the sunset gold, little spangles of motes drifting about him; for the merest second Winter’s glance lingered on him ere it went to the Jap, who passed him, courteously saluting.
After he had passed, the colonel looked again at the column and the crack—it was not there.
“Chito, chito!” muttered the colonel. Carelessly he approached the column and took the same posture as the Jap. Unobtrusively his fingers strayed over the stone. He scratched the surface; not stone, but cement. He tapped cautiously, keeping his hand well hidden by his body; no hollow sound rewarded him; but all at once his groping fingers touched a little round object under the bold point of an eight-pointed flower. He didn’t dare press on it; instead he resumed his cautious tapping. It seemed to him that the sound had changed. He glanced about him. Save for Haley he was alone in the patio. He pressed on the round white knob, and what he had half expected happened: a segment of the column swung on inner hinges, disclosing the hollow center of the engaged columns on either side. He looked down. Nothing but darkness was visible, but while he stood, tensely holding his breath, his abnormally sensitive auricular nerve caught distinctly the staccato breath of that kind of sigh which is like a groan, and a voice said more wearily than angrily: “Oh, damn it all!”
Almost simultaneously, he heard the faint footfalls of the men within; he must replace his movable flower. The column was intact, and he was bending his frowning brows on the stylobate of another when Birdsall and Mercer entered together, Mercer, with a shrug of his shoulders at the detective’s dogged suspicion, preceding the latter.
“Well,” said the colonel, “did you get my aunt?”
“Yes, suh, I got your aunt herself,” responded Mercer, with his Virginian survival of the formal civility of an earlier generation. “Yes, suh; but I regret to say Archie is not there.”
“Where is he?” The soldier’s voice was curt.