They went ashore at the headland to spy out the land. From amid the trees at its crest, Clement looked down on a mountain bay that might have been the crater of an extinct volcano in the mountains of the moon. At first it appeared almost terribly empty, then his glasses picked out a shack well hidden in the trees alongside the lake. He saw four people about that shack.
One was a man who sat smoking at his healthy ease and reading a paper on the porch of the shack. One was a woman, who sometimes came out of the door of the shack with a flutter of garments. She stood for a moment, always, and looked along the lake. Once she picked up what obviously were glasses, to stare across the water. She was watching. She was Mrs. Wandersun; the man reading was undoubtedly Gunning.
Undoubtedly Gunning—neither of the other two men by the waterside were.
These two men were in a motor boat. They were obviously working with some concentration on that motor boat. Only once, as Clement looked, did they become erect and examine something.
One of the men was a slight, slim fellow with his arm in a sling. That was Siwash.
The other was a big, massive mountain of a man, who sat up and moved with curiously swift movements. That was Neuburg.
Neuburg, the murderer, and Siwash, busy over something in a motor boat. Gatineau looked at Clement.
“What are they doing?” he asked. “What are they up to in that boat?”
IV
“The three of them there, an’ the woman,” said Gatineau, as they pushed out their boat again. “Three to face.”