“Why?” But he moved toward the doorway.
“Why? Because Fyles is behind me. I’ve seen him in the distance.”
Charlie came around the corner of the building with the door firmly closed behind him. Bill left the window and moved across to his horse, which was standing beside that of his brother. Charlie followed him.
Neither spoke again until the horses were reached, and Bill had unhitched his reins from the corral fence. Then he turned his great blue eyes, so full of trouble, upon the small figure beside him, and he answered the other’s half-angry, half-curious challenge with a question.
“What’s this place?” he demanded. Then he added, “And what’s that cupboard in there?” He jerked his head in the direction of the hut, “I saw you close it.”
Charlie seemed to have recovered from the apprehension which had caused him to obey his brother unquestioningly. There was an angry sparkle in his eyes as he gazed steadily into Bill’s face.
“That’s none of your damn business,” he said, in a low tone of surly truculence. “I’m not here to answer any questions till you tell me the reason why you’ve had the impertinence to hunt me down. How did you know where to find me?”
Just for one moment a hot retort leaped to the other’s lips. But he checked his rising temper. His journey in pursuit of his brother had been taken after deep reflection and consultation with Helen. But the mystery of that hut, that cupboard, did more to keep him calm than anything else. His curiosity was aroused. Not mere idle curiosity, but these things, this place, were a big link in the chain of evidence that had been forged about his brother, and he felt he was on the verge of a discovery. Then there was Fyles somewhere nearby in the neighborhood. This last thought, and all it portended, destroyed his feelings of resentment.
“I s’pose you think I followed you for sheer curiosity. Guess I might well enough do so, seeing we bear the same name, and that name’s liable to stink—through you. But I didn’t, anyway. I came out here to tell you something I heard this morning, and it’s about—last night. Fyles says that the result of last night is that the gang, their leader, is now wanted for an armed attack on the police, and that the penalty is—anything up to twenty years in the penitentiary.”
Charlie’s intense regard never wavered for one moment.