“Why, I’m goin’ to eat first,” he said. “After that—why, after that I’m goin’ to take up a considerable temporary abode in this shanty.”
“Alone?”
A look of concern had gathered in the Irishman’s expressive eyes.
“Sure.”
“But—Say—”
“Here. Listen, Mike,” Wilder exclaimed a little impatiently. “That goes. You understand. I’m going to sleep one night at least under this roof. And I’ve got to do it alone. Ther’s folks belonging to this place, and they’re around. If I’ve the sense of a blind mule I reckon they’ll sure come back to their camp. Well, that’s what I want. And I want ’em to find me here first. Come on. Let’s go an’ eat, an’ see how Chilcoot’s making out.”
The quiet of the place was intense. Not a sound of any sort penetrated the thick log walls of the house in the clearing. The brilliant, interminable daylight went on, for all the hour belonged to night. No ripple of air served to temper the humid heat of the valley outside. And within the house the feeling of suffocation was well-nigh intolerable.
Bill Wilder had flung himself into the upholstered chair which stood before the bureau bookcase which stood in the central apartment. It was midnight, and he was completely weary of his solitary wanderings through the deserted house. He had searched in every direction, in every outhouse, and every nook and corner of the great building. For something like four hours he had continued his work from the summit of the look-out tower to the empty, filthy dog corrals on the fringe of the clearing. And all his labours had yielded him nothing beyond that which the place had told him in the first few minutes of his earlier visit with Red Mike. He was disappointed. He was tired. But somehow he felt that, for all the negative result he had obtained so far, there was something still to come. Something which would ultimately reward his persistence.
He felt his early inspiration was not for nothing. He knew it was not. A subtle conviction pursued him, had pursued him every minute of his lonely search. He could not have explained his reasons for the belief that obsessed him. There were no tangible grounds for it, but he knew, he felt that from the moment he had set foot within the strange house there had been eyes following his every movement, there was someone, who, all unseen, had never for a single moment permitted him to pursue his investigations unobserved.