He smiled as he watched the leap of the flames which so readily devoured the dead, resinous wood. It was a smile of fierce derision—an ugly smile that played about his loose mouth. What fools those folk were to have given him such a chance. He would never have found the place. He could never have hoped to do so.
The smile died out of his eyes as he thought of the prolonged labour of his search. The weary days, probing, seeking, in a hill country whose confusion was sufficient to madden the bewildered human mind. The days of blistering heat. The nights of cheerless solitude. The weary dispiritment of it all to a man who has given up everything, staked all upon the chance of things, relying only upon his endurance and the skill acquired in a police training. No, he would never have discovered Jim Pryse’s hiding-place but for the folly of those associated with him. And yet—and yet—there it was, so easy to arrive at. The way was practically a direct trail from the Marton farm.
His smile returned. He recalled the vision of Lightning as he had halted at the entrance to the valley of that queer creek. For himself he had only narrowly escaped the man’s observation. The old man’s attention had been held in another direction, or surely his discovery must have been inevitable. Then had come that woman on her black horse. How he had strained to discover the talk that passed between them. But it had been impossible to hear from his shelter in the woods. He could see. Oh, yes, he could see. And when they moved up that queer creek together he was as close on their heels as safety from discovery permitted.
Then had come the arrival at the lagoon and the three-way source of the creek. And then—and then he had watched from a distance the ascent to the mouth of the cavern out of which the waters cascaded. Even now, in his mood of tremendous elation, he found the mystery of that weird inlet into the heart of the hills something profoundly absorbing.
He continued thinking of it all. He wanted to do nothing else. He remembered his own ultimate passage of that tunnel, and the revelation beyond. And he wondered how it came that Pryse had first discovered it. Yes. It certainly was no wonder that the police patrols sent out in pursuit of the man had returned to report complete failure. No police patrol could have found it; could ever have hoped to find it. No trained policeman would have admitted that that cavern mouth could by any miracle be the entrance to another, higher valley. But they would learn the facts now surely enough. Oh, yes.
He reached out a foot and kicked the fire together. Then he glanced over in the direction of his horse. After that he turned an ear to the sound of the breeze in the foliage overhead. It had increased. And the chill of the night had increased with it.
He turned again to the fire and shook his head.
No. He would tell them nothing but the fact that he could lead them to the hiding-place of Jim Pryse, who was due for five years in the penitentiary—with hard labour. He passed his tongue across his lips with intense satisfaction. Yes. He would tell Leedham Branch that. And his price for the man’s recapture would be very definite.
He hugged himself gleefully, for he knew that nothing could be more sure than that his price would be paid. If he knew the Police it certainly would. There would be no preliminary payment. But on fulfilment of his part it would be different. A cold word of approval. A word to the Sergeant-Major. A regimental order. Reinstatement. And then his final triumph. He would beg to be allowed to convey the prisoner to the penitentiary.
He laughed audibly as he wondered if the old kit he had returned into store would come back to him again. Perhaps.