The Chief got down and hurried into the station. Through the window I could see him in consultation with a man who looked like a traveling salesman. Presently he came out again. “All right, Clayton,” he called. “We’ll leave the car here. Come along if you feel up to it.” Heldt and I got down and walked over to the Chief and his companion. “This is Foster, Clayton. One of my right-hand men. Meet the other,” he added to the stranger. “Glad to meet you, Clayton. Pretty fine bit of work you’ve done. I heard all about it. Well, it’s getting dusk. It’ll be dark in half an hour. Guess we’d better start, eh, sir? The men are ready for us.” I was a little bewildered, but I turned with the others and started off down the road on foot, without the faintest idea of where I was going. Presently we turned off into a little side road and then off again in among a little group of trees. And here, sitting in rows on fallen trees or standing talking quietly together in groups, loomed up what seemed like a regular regiment of men. We had all the reënforcements now that heart could desire. Chapter XXIII Within the Web We waited quietly in the woods until darkness fell. None of us spoke above a whisper, and there was no lighting of matches or anything else to draw attention to us. But no one passed by in the road outside except a party of young people in a broken-down Ford, and our nerves survived that ordeal. But at last it grew too dark in the woods to see your own hand in front of your eyes, and then the Chief gave the signal and we stumbled out of our hiding-place as silently as we could. We turned to the right, and the men strung out behind us in a long single file, walking close to the edge of the road and making little noise. The road was deserted for the most part, but when a car or a wagon passed, the men faded into the shadows like a band of Red Indians and no one noticed us. We came to a cross-roads presently and turned to the left into a much smaller road. Here the Chief slowed our pace considerably. And presently he turned back and issued some instructions in a whisper, and two of the men turned off and plunged into the dense woods about us. The Chief came up and touched my arm. “The house is over there,” he whispered. “Foster knows this country around here like a book. I sent those two men to reconnoiter it. The garage is a few hundred feet ahead of us. We’re going to spread out now and surround it.” I stood with him in the starlit road, for the night was moonless though clear, and watched the men file past me like so many ghosts and disappear into the darkness ahead and on either side of us. And presently the Chief and Foster and I were alone in the road. “Come along,” he whispered, and we walked ahead.