Five hundred gallons!
Sinclair considered. He was listening and watching, too. He told himself the whole desperate game was now in his hands. The Wolf and Pideau were definitely booked for penitentiary—provided always he made no mistake.
Oh, he was going to do nothing of that sort. He was taking no chances. Everything was just as he would have it. Even to the setting of those precious kegs. He could crouch behind the stack, an excellent rampart against gunfire, with the drop on the men he was waiting for as they silhouetted against the moonlight beyond the mouth of the cavern.
Eight o’clock. Annette had said eight o’clock. It was not so long to wait now. And he was glad. He was yearning for activity. Yearning for that triumph he felt to be coming to him. For all the cold was already eating into his bones he felt that he could, if necessary, endure hours of waiting for such an end to his night’s work.
It would be so very easy, too. Those two would not have a dog’s chance really. How could they? He knew his own value as a shot. And then the moonlight. Why—— But he would be very careful. He would shoot. Of course he would shoot on sight. But not to kill. Oh, no. That would——
A shot crashed in the echoing cavern like the thunder of high explosive. The policeman’s whole body seemed to jolt and stiffen. Then a spasm shivered him from his head to his heels. He staggered, swayed, and slowly crumpled up. He fell forward almost without a sound. Without so much as the moan of a dying soul he rolled over face upwards on the rough stone of the floor. And he lay there still—so still.
Ernest Sinclair was stone dead. Already he was stiffening in the bitter cold of the night. The kneeling figure crouching over his body was in no doubt upon the subject. The shot had driven straight through its victim’s heart as he stood outlined against the lantern light with his back turned to the cavern entrance.
The groping hands desisted from the examination they had been carefully carrying out. The figure sat back on a pair of moccasined heels, and thoughtful dark eyes considered the sprawled body. Then they glanced down at the old-fashioned, seven-chambered revolver lying on the ground near by.
A deep-drawn sigh. Perhaps it was relief, or even pity at the necessity for the destruction wrought. It was impossible to tell.