Part 32 (1/2)

”What are you doing on my property at this hour?”

”Digging.”

”Ah!” It was hardly an exclamation; rather it was a contained commentary. Mr. Blair had noted the exhumed casket. ”You might better have taken my offer,” he continued after a pause of some seconds. ”I think, sir, you have dug the grave of your own career.”

”That remains to be seen.”

”Schlager! Are you there?”

”Yes, Mr. Blair. They've broken my wrist and got my gun.”

Mr. Blair took that under consideration. ”It doesn't strike me that you are much of a man-hunter,” he observed judicially. ”Who are _they_?”

”Francis Sedgwick is the other, at your service,” answered the owner of that name.

An extraordinary convulsion of rage distorted the set features of the elderly man.

”You!” he cried. ”Haven't you done enough-without this! I would come on now if h.e.l.l yawned for me.”

Stricken with amazement at the hatred in the tone, Sedgwick stood staring. But Kent stepped before the advancing man. ”This won't do,” he said firmly. ”We can't any of us afford killing.”

”I can,” contradicted Mr. Blair.

”You would gain nothing by it. If one of us is killed the other will finish the task. You know what I am here for, Mr. Blair. I purpose to open that coffin and then go.”

”No,” said the master of Hedgerow House; and it was twenty years since his ”no” had been overborne.

”Yes,” returned Chester Kent quietly.

Mr. Blair's arm rose, steady and slow, with the inevitable motion of machinery.

”If you shoot,” pointed out Kent, ”you will rouse the house. Is there no one there from whom you wish to conceal that coffin?”

The arm rose higher until the muzzle of the pistol glared, like a baleful l.u.s.terless eye, into Kent's face. Instead of making any counter-motion with the sheriff's revolver, the scientist turned on his heel, walked to Sedgwick, and handed him the weapon. ”I'm going to open the coffin, Frank,” he announced. ”That pistol of Mr. Blair's is a target arm. It has only one shot.”

”True,” put in its owner, ”but I can score one hundred and twenty with it at a hundred yards' range.”

”If he should fire, Frank, wing him. And then, whatever happens, get that casket open. That is the one thing you _must_ do-for me and yourself.”

”But he may kill you,” cried Sedgwick in an agony of apprehension.

”He may; but I think he won't.”

”Won't he!” muttered the older man on an indrawn breath. ”I'd rather it was the other scoundrel. But either-or both.”

Sedgwick stepped to within two paces of him. ”Blair,” he said with a snarl, ”you so much as _think_ with that trigger finger, and you're dead!”

”No, no killing, Frank,” countermanded Kent. ”In his place, you'd perhaps do as he is doing.”

”Don't take any chances, Mr. Blair,” besought the sheriff. ”They're desperate characters. Look what they done to me!”

”There's a testimonial,” murmured Kent, as he picked up his spade, ”for one who has always worked on the side of law and order.”