“She isn’t,” Clement grinned at him. “How was she to know you hadn’t finished fixing it yet?” As Siwash turned, snarling at the trap into which he had fallen, Clement said to the men: “All right, get aboard and see what you can do with her—she’s apparently not quite ready for killing people yet.”
In five minutes he was looking at a dynamite cartridge, fixed cunningly near the gasoline tank. There was a time fuse by it, but not yet connected up.
“The hand of Nachbar,” said Gatineau, holding up the cartridge.
“Yes,” agreed Clement, feeling sick. “That was to be the ‘accident’ in the wilds.”
“Sure,” agreed Gatineau. “Miss Reys was to be sent off in a hurry in that boat for something. Somewhere, when the time fuse expired—within sight of Sicamous, prob’bly—the dynamite would send up the gas tank. Boat and girl would just vanish before the eyes of men in a sheet of flame—a natural, brilliant, devilish accident.”
Clement, almost physically ill, shook his fist at the lake.
“By God!” he cried. “That man must not be allowed to get free! We’ve got to find him, Gatineau, and settle with him. We’ve got to get him.”
II
It was more than an hour before they were out on the lake, pushing towards Sicamous.