When he wakened again he saw through half-closed lids that now it was broad daylight. Hearing the voices of two men in the room, and recognizing both voices, Bowen did not open his eyes fully. Instead, he shut them again and kept them shut for a time. His head was still hurting, but not with that first keen pain; it was now the dulled, deadened hurt of an old bruise. It no longer dominated him. He had wakened alert, with full memory of what had passed; he was, in short, pretty much himself, except for the cold anger that possessed him. A burning thirst consumed him, but anger dominated it. And when Bob Bowen was angry to the bottom of his soul, he was not the man to pause over half-way measures, or to ask himself what might happen. He knew what would happen if he got the chance! “He ain’t wise to the world yet,” said the voice of Cheadle. “Want to stir him up?” “No,” the more biting tones of Henderson made response. “No time for that now. Let it wait until to-night.” “Well, what then?” Cheadle was evidently impatient. “I’m tired o’ being a door-mat, Henderson. I want to know how the big stroke is comin’, and why; and about this poor boob—what’s going to happen to him and us. No more obeying orders till I know why, boss.” The ugly note in that voice was manifest even to Bowen. Henderson replied quickly. “Him? Oh, leave him till to-night. I’m not going to hurt him any more; just let him know he mustn’t butt into _my_ games after this. We’ll scatter some whisky on his clothes and take him over to the Mission and leave him. He isn’t the sort of fool who spills all he knows to the police; he’s too wise to buy chips in a stacked game! He’ll take his lesson. “And now come along and we’ll sit in at the big game.” Footsteps and silence. Then the two voices again, less clear this time, but quite intelligible, and a scrape of chairs. Bowen opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor of a disordered bedroom, lighted by a dingy window. Three feet from him a curtain closed an old-style double doorway; the doors were not pulled to, and in the other room were Henderson and Cheadle. The former telephoned to some unknown “Charley,” and gave orders to be kept in touch with every move of Apex Crown. Then he and Cheadle fell into conversation, earnest and low-voiced. Though he caught only scraps of that conversation, Bowen listened in astounded incredulity. Before him the two speakers unfolded a deeper and craftier knavery than he had ever dreamed; schooled as he was in the tricky mining game, the former agent of Dickover was now springing something unrivaled in his experience for audacity and duplicity! From the muttered voices Bowen was enabled to piece together the following scheme of things: Cheadle was the superintendent in charge of the Apex Crown development.