“Yes, I remember.”
“They were clear enough. You couldn’t make a mistake if you saw one of those men. I saw Nicholas tonight, by the bright light of his own signal torch. I couldn’t be mistaken. In the shoe shop he was always bending over, half hiding his face. Tonight I really saw him.”
“Where’s his signal torch?” Brand asked suddenly.
“That’s right,” Dave sprang up. “Where is it? In my excitement I might have—
“Yes. Here it is.” He drank in a deep breath of relief. “I must have put it down. I—I was afraid he had come back for it.”
“He never will,” said Brand.
“You can’t be sure,” Dave replied thoughtfully. “Flash went in with him. If Flash escaped, how about Nicholas Schlitz, the spy? After all, there were three blasts. There was some time between the first and last. Who’s going to say whether the first or last made that hole out there?”
To this question Brand found no answer.
Brand stood up, gazed at the sky, north, south, east and west, listened for a full minute, then said: “Storm’s over. Let’s see if we can’t get them all to go home.”
It took little persuading to get Alice and Cherry started. Soon they were all on their way.