Part 28 (1/2)

They resumed their card-playing. An hour or so later there came a knock on the door of the bank--a back door--and Dale opened it to admit Morley--the big man who had drawn a pistol on Sanderson when he had tried to take Barney Owen out of the City Hotel barroom.

Morley was alone. He stepped inside without invitation and grinned at the others.

”There's no sign of Sanderson. Someone had been there an' planted the guys we salivated--an' the guy which went down in the run. We seen his horse layin' there, cut to ribbons. It's likely Sanderson went into the sand ahead of the herd--they was crowdin' him pretty close when we seen them runnin'.”

”You say them guys was planted?” said Dale. ”Then Sanderson got out of it. He would--if anyone could, for he was riding like a devil on a cyclone when I saw him. He's got back, and took his men to Devil's Hole.”

Maison laughed. ”We'll say he got out of it. What of it? He's broke.

And if the d.a.m.ned court would get a move on with that evidence we've sent over to prove that he isn't a Bransford, we'd have the Double A inside of a week!”

Dale got up, grinning and looking at his watch.

”Well, gentlemen, I'm hitting the breeze to the Bar D for some sleep.

See you tomorrow.”

Dale went out and mounted his horse. But he did not go straight home, as he had declared he would. After striking the neck of the basin he swerved his horse and rode northeastward toward Ben Nyland's cabin.

For he had heard that day in Okar that Ben Nyland had taken a train eastward that morning, to return on the afternoon of the day following.

And during the time Dale had been talking with Maison; and Silverthorn, and playing cards with them, he thought often of Peggy Nyland.

Silverthorn and Morley did not remain long in Maison's private room in the bank building.

Morley had promised to play cards with some of his men in the City Hotel barroom, and he joined them there, while Silverthorn went to his rooms in the upper story of the station.

After the departure of the others, Maison sat for a long time at the table in the private room, making figures on paper.

Maison had exacted from the world all the luxuries he thought his pampered body desired. His financial career would not have borne investigation, but Maison's operations had been so smooth and subtle that he had left no point at which an enemy could begin an investigation.

But years of questionable practice had had an inevitable effect upon Maison. Outwardly, he had hardened, but only Maison knew of the many devils his conscience created for him.

Continued communion with the devils of conscience had made a coward of Maison. When at last he got up from the table he glanced apprehensively around the room; and after he had put out the light and climbed the stairs to his rooms above the bank, he was trembling.

Maison had often dealt crookedly with his fellow-men, but never, until the incident of Devil's Hole, had he deliberately planned murder. Thus tonight Maison's conscience had more ghastly evidence to confront him with, and conscience is a pitiless retributive agent.

Maison poured himself a generous drink of whisky from a bottle on a sideboard before he got into bed, but the story told him by Dale and the others of the terrible scene at Devil's Hole--remained so staringly vivid in his thoughts that whisky could not dim it.

He groaned and pulled the covers over his head, squirming and twisting, for the night was warm and there was little air stirring.

After a while Maison sat up. It seemed to him that he had been in bed for an age, though actually the time was not longer than an hour.

It had been late when he had left the room downstairs. And now he listened for sounds that would tell him that Okar's citizens were still busy with their pleasures.

But no sound came from the street. Maison yearned for company, for he felt unaccountably depressed and morbid. It was as though some danger impended and instinct was warning him of it.

But in the dead silence of Okar there was no suggestion of sound. It must have been in the ghostly hours between midnight and the dawn--though a cold terror that had gripped Maison would not let him get up to look at the clock that ticked monotonously on the sideboard.

He lay, clammy with sweat, every sense strained and acute, listening.

For, from continued contemplation of imaginary dangers he had worked himself into a frenzy which would have turned into a conviction of real danger at the slightest sound near him.

He expected sound to come; he waited for it, his ears attuned, his senses alert.