Carstairs watched them for a minute as they stood hand in hand, smiling compliments into each other's faces, then he opened the door quietly and went out into the engine room. He looked round on his smoothly-running, even-turning friends; he had been wont to remark that the applied logic of a running steam engine was the thing that appealed to him most, but now—
"They do seem rather tame after men, somehow," he said, to himself.
CHAPTER XIII
For a month things went on quite smoothly. The police, although spurred to strenuous efforts by the glib tongue of Pat Donovan, J.P., absolutely failed to discover any trace of Darwen's assailant. Something seemed to be on the mind of Mr Donovan too, but Darwen still smiled. "I'm taking that man into my service when he's able to get about again, he's going to take on the job of gardener, etc."
"What will Mr Donovan say?"
"He won't know. That's what's worrying him now, he can't make out what has become of his man. Mr Donovan will move again shortly. The Irishman can never wait."
They were carrying out extensions at the works, adding a wing to the engine room, and one day, a few weeks later, Carstairs and Darwen were standing in the new part, just underneath some scaffolding where some men were working under the roof; they were discussing an important point, but Carstairs noticed that Darwen seemed a trifle absent-minded. He kept looking away, up at the men working. Suddenly, without any warning, he pulled Carstairs aside, next moment a heavy iron bar crashed down on the concrete at their feet, just as a man's voice sang out, "Look out below."
"By George, that would have corpsed us," Carstairs said.
"Our friend above there was a little late in warning us," Darwen observed. There was a sort of pleased light in his eye, he seemed strangely buoyant. "He's drunk," he continued, "I've been watching him, he's a new man, on to-day. I'll go up and tell the foreman to send him home." He walked over to the ladder, then he stopped, and picking up the iron bar stood it carefully upright in a bolt hole. "You might go into my office and get those papers, will you? I'll be with you in a minute," he said over his shoulder as he mounted the ladder.