Left to himself, Anthony stretched out flat on his back. It had been a
wild, hard day, but he felt not the slightest touch of weariness; all he
wished was to relax his muscles for a few moments. Moreover, he must be
away from the house with the dawn-first, because Sally Fortune might
waken, guess where he had gone, and follow him; secondly because the
news of what had happened at Drew's place might reach Wood at any hour.
So he lay trying to fight the thought of Sally from his mind and
concentrate on some way of getting back to Drew without riding the
gauntlet of the law.
The sleep which stole upon him came by slow degrees; or, rather, he was
not fully asleep, when a sound outside the house roused him to sharp
consciousness compared with which his drowsiness had been a sleep.
It was a knocking at the door, not loud, but repeated. At the same time
he heard Jerry Wood cursing softly in a neighbouring room, and then the
telltale creak of bedsprings.
The host was rousing himself a second time that night. Or, rather, it
was morning now, for when Anthony sat up he saw that the hills were
stepping out of the shadows of the night, black, ugly shapes revealed by
a grey background of the sky. A window went up noisily.
"Am I runnin' a hotel?" roared Jerry Wood. "Ain't I to have no sleep no
more? Who are ye?"
A lowered, muttering voice answered.
"All right," said Jerry, changing his tone at once. "I'll come down."
His steps descended the noisy stairs rapidly; the door creaked. Then
voices began again outside the house, an indistinct mumble, rising to
one sharp height in an exclamation.
Almost at once steps again sounded on the stairs, but softly now. Bard
went quietly to the door, locked it, and stole back to the window. Below
it extended the roof of a shed, joining the main body of the house only
a few feet under his window and sloping to what could not have been a
dangerous distance from the ground. He raised the window-sash.
Yet he waited, something as he had waited for Sally Fortune to speak
earlier in the night, with a sense of danger, but a danger which
thrilled and delighted him. No game of polo could match suspense like
this. Besides, he would be foolish to go before he was sure.
The walls were gaping with cracks that carried the sounds, and now he
heard a sibilant whisper with a perfect clearness.
"This is the room."
There was a click as the lock was tried.
"Locked, damn it!"
"Shut up, Butch. Jerry, have you got a bar, or anything? We'll pry it
down and break in on him before he can get in action."
"You're a fool, McNamara. That feller don't take a wink to get into
action. Sure he didn't hear you when you hollered out the window? That
was a fool move, Wood."
"I don't think he heard. There wasn't any sound from his room when I
passed it goin' downstairs. Think of the nerve of this bird comin' here
to roost after what he done."
"He didn't think we'd follow him so fast."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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