But if, now being on the job in person, he could rig a scheme to make Britt disclose, what could be done for coadjutor Wagg? There was a reward posted for information leading to the recovery of the money. Britt had offered that reward. He had made quite a show of the thing in the public prints. He pledged himself to pay the sum of two thousand five hundred dollars from his own pocket, and Vaniman bitterly realized just why Britt had adopted that pose. Would Wagg be content with the sop of the reward?

The man who had been declared dead knew that he must play for time. He ran over various plans in his head. He did not feel like blurting out the truth to Mr. Wagg and asking what that effectually compromised gentleman was going to do about it. He needed Mr. Wagg. He thought of pleading that the summer landscape was so much different from the winter lay of the land, when the snow was heaped in the gullies and on the hills, that he was bothered in remembering just where he had planted the treasure that night; he reflected that he might show Mr. Wagg a hole in the rocks and assert that some of the persistent Egyptian gold hunters had undoubtedly located the money and taken it for themselves; being moved to more desperate projects, he meditated on the plan of coming across to Wagg with the whole story, showing him that Britt must be guilty, and thereby turning a blackmailer loose on the magnate with plenty of material to use in extorting what Wagg might consider fair pay for the work he had put in.

But Vaniman was freshly free from prison walls. Just then he was psychologically incapable of standing up for himself as a real man ought. His sense of innocence had not been able to withstand that feeling of intimidation with which a prisoner becomes obsessed. Right along with him was the man who had been persistently his guard in the prison. Wagg's narrow rut of occupation had had its full effect on his nature. His striated eyeballs had a vitreous look; they were as hard as marbles. Vaniman knew that he could not look at those eyes and tell a convincing lie. In view of Wagg's settled convictions in the matter of the treasure, the real truth might be harder to support than a lie.

Vaniman went into the van like a whipped dog into a kennel and lay awake and wrestled with his difficulties.

During the progress of the pilgrimage the next day Wagg halted frequently. Vaniman could hear the conversations between his charioteer and the natives of the section. Mr. Wagg was seeking information and at the same time he gave out a modest amount of revelation about himself and his need of a retired spot where he might recuperate. He explained that he wanted to find a camp in some place so remote that nobody would be coming around jarring his nerves.

Eventually he got on track of what he wanted. A native told him about an abandoned log house on the top of a mountain called "Devilbrow."

"They used it for a fire-warden station in the days when Egypt had enough timber to make it an object to protect it," said the man. "You'll be plenty lonesome up there. You can get your wagon within half a mile. Pack your truck on your hoss's back and lead him the rest of the way. That's what I used to do. I was warden till I found myself trying to carry on conversations with tumblebugs and whippoorwills."

When Wagg had driven along far enough so that the native could not overhear, he hailed Vaniman through the trap in the top of the van.

"Did you hear that?"

"Yes."

"Is that Devilbrow within grabbing distance of what we're after?"

Vaniman returned a hearty affirmative. He had been able to see those craggy heights from his window in Britt Block. The thought that what he wanted to grab and what Mr. Wagg wanted to grab were not exactly mated as desired objects did not shade his candor when he asserted that Devilbrow was just the place from which to operate.

"All right!" chirruped Wagg. "Us for it!" He displayed the first cheeriness he had shown on the trip. He whistled for a time. Then he sang, over and over, to a tune of his own, "Up above the world so high, like a di'mond in the sky." This display of Wagg's hopeful belief that the fifty-fifty settlement was near at hand served to increase Vaniman's despondency.

Obeying the native's instructions as to the route, Wagg soon turned off the highway and drove along a rutted lane which whiplashed a slope that continually became steeper. Soon he pulled up and told Vaniman to get out and walk and ease the load on the horse. Wagg got down and walked, too.

The trail up Devilbrow was on the side away from the village of Egypt. The way was through hard growth. There were no houses—no sign of a human being. Wagg's cheerfulness increased. And he said something which put a glimmer of cheer into Vaniman's dark ponderings.

"There's no call to hurry the thing overmuch. If I recuperate too sudden and show up back home it might look funny, after the way I bellowed about my condition. There's plenty of flour, bacon, and canned stuff in that van. I reckon we'd better get our feet well settled here and make sure that nobody is watching us; the money is safer in the hole than with us, for the time being. My pay is going on and the future looks rosy."

A cock partridge rose from the side of the lane and whirred away through the beech leaves that the first frost of early autumn had yellowed.

"And I've got a shotgun and plenty of shells! Son, let's forget that we have ever been in state prison. In the course of time that place is about as wearing on a guard as it is on a convict."

The log camp was behind a spur of the rocky summit and was hidden from the village below. Wagg commented with satisfaction on the location when they had reached the place. The van had been concealed in a ravine which led from the lane. The work of loading the horse with the sacked supplies, and the ascent of the mountain, had consumed hours. Twilight was sifting into the valleys by the time they had unloaded the stuff and stabled the horse in a lean-to.

There was a stove in the camp, and the place was furnished after a fashion with chairs and a table fashioned from birch saplings. The blankets of Wagg's camp equipment made the bunks comfortable.

Wagg had been the cook as well as the captain of the expedition. He did better that evening with the wood-burning stove than he had done with the oil stove of his kit.

After supper, before he turned in, Vaniman went out on a spur of Devilbrow and gazed down on the scattered lights of the village of Egypt. As best he could he determined the location of the Harnden house. He felt as helplessly aloof as if he were a shade revisiting the scene of his mortal experiences.



CHAPTER XXV

THE FIRST PEEP BEHIND THE CURTAIN

The next day Wagg went out and shot two partridges and contrived a stew which fully occupied his attention in the making and the eating. He had suggested to Vaniman that he'd better come along on the expedition after the birds. Vaniman found a bit more than mere suggestion in Wagg's manner of invitation. With his shotgun in the hook of his arm he presented his wonted appearance as the guard at the prison. It was perfectly apparent that Mr. Wagg proposed to keep his eye on the promiser of the fifty-fifty split. But Wagg did not refer to the matter of the money while they strolled in the woods.

As a matter of fact, days went by without the question coming up.

Wagg had previously praised himself as a patient waiter; the young man confessed in his thoughts that his guardian merited the commendation. Wagg was plainly having a particularly good time on this outing. He displayed the contentment of a man who had ceased to worry about the future; he was taking it easy, like a vacationer with plenty of money in the bank. On one occasion he did mention the money in the course of a bit of philosophizing on the situation:

"I suppose that, when you look at it straight, it's stealing, what I'm doing. I've seen a lot of big gents pass through that state prison, serving sentences for stealing. Embezzlement, forgery, crooked stock dealing—it's all stealing. They were tempted. I've been tempted. I've fell. I ain't an angel, any more than those big gents were. And you know what I told you about mourners chirking up, after the first blow! I figure it's the same way in the bank case. They have given up the idea of getting the money back. They're still sad when they think about it, but they keep thinking less and less every day. They've crossed it off, as you might say."

The two who were bound in that peculiar comradeship were out on the crag where they could look down upon the distant checker board of the village. Vaniman, in the stress of the circumstances, wondered whether he might be able to come at Wagg on the sentimental side of his nature.

"The little town must have gone completely broke since the bank failure. Innocent people are suffering. If that money could be returned—"

He did not finish the sentence. Mr. Wagg was most distinctly not encouraging that line of talk.

"Look here, Vaniman, when you got away with that money you had hardened yourself up to the point where you were thinking of your own self first, hadn't you?"

The young man did not dare to burst out with the truth—not while Wagg was in the mood his expression hinted at.

Wagg continued: "Well, I've got myself to the point where I'm thinking of my own self. I'm as hard as this rock I'm sitting on." In his emphasis on that assertion Wagg scarred his knuckles against the ledge. "After all the work I've had in getting myself to that point, I'm proposing to stay there. If you try to soften me I shall consider that you're welching on your trade."

Wagg made the declaration in loud tones. After all his years of soft-shoeing and repression in a prison, the veteran guard was taking full advantage of the wide expanses of the big outdoors.

"What did I do for you, Vaniman? I let you cash in on a play that I had planned ever since the first barrow of dirt was dumped into that pit. There's a lifer in that prison with rich relatives. I reckon they would have come across with at least ten thousand dollars. There's a manslaughter chap who owns four big apartment houses. But I picked you because I could sympathize with you on account of your mother and that girl the papers said so much about. It's a job that can't be done over again, not even for the Apostle Peter. Now will you even hint at welching?"

"Certainly not!"

But that affirmation did not come from Vaniman. It was made in his behalf by a duet of voices, bass and nasal tenor, speaking loudly and confidently behind the two men who were sitting on the ledge.

The younger man leaped to his feet and whirled; the older man struggled partly upright and ground his knees on the ledge when he turned to inspect the terrifying source of sound.

So far as Vaniman's recollection went, they were strangers. One was short and dumpy, the other was tall and thin. They wore slouchy, wrinkled, cheap suits. There was no hint of threat in their faces. On the contrary, both of the men displayed expressions of mingled triumph and mischief. Then, as if they had a mutual understanding in the matter of procedure, they went through a sort of drill. They stuck their right arms straight out; they crooked the arms at the elbows; they drove their hands at their hip pockets and produced, each of them, a bulldog revolver; they snapped their arms into position of quick aim.

Wagg threw up his hands and began to beg. Vaniman held himself under better control.

But the men did not shoot. They returned the guns to their pockets and saluted in military fashion, whacking their palms violently against their thighs in finishing salute.

"Present!" they cried. Then the dumpy man grinned. Wagg had been goggling, trying to resolve his wild incredulity into certainty. That grin settled the thing for him. It was the same sort of a suggestive grin that he had viewed on that day of days in the prison yard.

"Number Two-Eight-Two!" he quavered.

"Sure thing!" The dumpy man patted the tall man's arm. "Add one, and you have Number Two-Eight-Three—a pal who drew the next number because we're always in company."

"And we're here because we're here," stated the other.

The short man fixed his gaze on the ex-cashier. "You don't realize it yet, but this is more of a reunion than it looks to be on the surface. You two gents have seen how we're fixed in the gun line, and we hope the understanding is going to make the party sociable."

"You may be thinking that this is only another case of it being proved how small the world is, after all," remarked the tall man. "Not so! Not so! We have followed you two because we have important business with you. We have had a lot of trouble and effort in getting here. Bear that in mind, please!"

The new arrivals were quite matter-of-fact and Wagg was helped to recover some of his composure. "The two of you are three-year men—robbery in the nighttime," he declared, out of his official knowledge. "What in blue blazes are you doing outside the pen?"

"Attending to the same business as you are—after a slice of the bank coin," replied the short man, carelessly.

Wagg got to his feet and banged his fists together. "Do you dare to walk right up to a guard of the state prison and—and—" He balked in his demand for information; Mr. Wagg was plainly afflicted with a few uncomfortable considerations of his own situation.

"We do!" the convicts declared in concert. Then the dumpy man went on: "And whatever else it is you're wondering whether we dare to do, we'll inform that we dare. Once on a time we had occasion to express our opinion of a bank. I wrote out that opinion and left it where it would be seen. Not exactly Sunday-school language, but it hit the case." He turned away from Vaniman's frenzy of gasping interrogation. He confined his attention to Wagg. "A prison guard, say you? You're a hell of a guard!"

"Opinion indorsed!" said the other convict.

For a few moments there was complete silence on the summit of Devilbrow. Somewhere, on an upland farm in the distance, a cow mooed. Then a rooster challenged all comers.

"That's the word, old top!" agreed the tall man. "It expresses my feelings," He clapped his hands against his legs and cried in his tenor, imitating the singsong of the rooster, "We're here because we're he-e-ere!"

Then he and his fellow sat down on a ledge outcropping that overtopped and commanded the position of the other men. The convicts surveyed Vaniman and Wagg with a complacent air of triumph. "Are you willing to take things as they stand, or do you feel that you can't go ahead till your curiosity has been scratched?" inquired the short man.

"Curiosity!" stormed the ex-cashier. "Do you dare to call the feeling I have in me curiosity?" He thumped his fist against his breast.

"And how about my feelings, with escaped convicts racing and chasing all over this country?" shouted the guard. "What has happened to that prison since I've been off my job?"

"One at a time!" The dumpy man put up his hand to shut off the stream of questions that were pouring from Wagg. "The young fellow has his innings first. He has more good reasons for rearing and tearing. It's easy enough to get out of a state prison when you have a trick that can be worked once." He winked at Wagg. Then he directed his remarks strictly at Vaniman.

"I'm going to talk free and open. We're all in the same boat. We're a couple of pots, and both of you are kettles, all black. Now, listen! I'm Bill." He stuck his finger against his breast and then tagged with it his pal at his side. "He's Tom. Bill and Tom have been humble and hard-working yeggmen, never tackling anything bigger than country stores and farmers' flivvers. Once on a time they were in a barn, tucked away waiting for night, and they heard a man running a double shift of talk—beating down the farmer on the price of cattle and blowing off about gold coin hoarded by the bushel in a rube bank."

Stickney's unruly mouth! Vaniman understood. "So, says Bill to Tom: 'Why not go up like everything else is going up these days?' Says Tom to Bill: 'I'm on.' We took our time about it, getting the lay of the land. We went down to the big burg to buy drills and soup and pick up points on how to crack a real nut. Equipment up to that time had been a glass cutter and a jimmy for back windows and padlocks."

He was humorously drawling his confession. He stopped talking and lighted a cigarette. Impatience that was agony urged Vaniman, but he controlled himself. Wagg did not venture to say anything. His thoughts were keeping him busy; he was mentally galloping, trying to catch up with the new situation.

"And let me tell you that when Bill and Tom got back up here, they had colder feet than the weather accounted for. General headquarters, that camp!" He jerked thumb gesture toward the log cabin. "It had been our hang-out in times past when we operated in this section. Handy place! Finally got up courage enough to go to the job. Fine night for it! Deserted village. Peeked into Town Hall and saw the general round-up. Light in the bank. Bill was boosted up by Tom and got a peek over the curtain. One fellow inside adding figures—much taken up. Bank-vault door wide open. Front door unlocked. Crawled in. Kept crawling. Crawled into bank room. Grille door wide open. Bill up and hit fellow with rubber nob-knocker—it snuffs, but is not dangerous. Tom is handy by with the chloroform—always carried it for our second-story work."

The young man began to stride to and fro, striving by using his legs to keep from using his tongue.

The narrator snapped the ash off his cigarette. "Bill and Tom looked at each other. Did they expect such easy picking? They did not. The stuff had been fairly handed to 'em. They dragged the stuff out—all the sacks of it. Transportation all planned on. Couple of handsleds such as we had seen leaning up against the houses in the village. Slipped the fellow into the vault with his hands tied and shut the door with a trig so that he couldn't kick it open right away. Idea was that anybody stepping in later would think he had gone home; we intended to put out the light; nothing desperate about us; we wouldn't shoot the bolts. Bill said to Tom that there'd be a hunt for the fellow when he failed to show up at home, wherever he lived, and he'd sure be pulled out of the vault in good season. Thoughtful, you see! Not bloody villains. Simply wanted time for our getaway. Slow pulling up this hill with handsleds! But we slit a bag to make sure of what we would be pulling. And we kept on slitting bags. And—" the short man shook his head and sighed. "You say it, Tom. I'm trying to be sociable in this talk with these gents—showing a full and free spirit in coming across with the facts. But I don't trust myself!"

"Nor I!" declared Tom. "We'd better not spoil a pleasant party."

"Well, Bill wrote his sentiments, as they occurred to him at the time. Then we heard somebody hollering at the front door that we had left open. We ran and jumped behind the door of the bank office. The fellow who galloped in ran a few times in circles and then he galloped out. He might have noticed a rhinoceros if the rhino had risen up and bit him. But he paid no attention to Bill and Tom behind the door. And Bill and Tom walked out. And we managed to get clear of the village just as that Town Hall crowd broke loose.

"Says Bill to Tom, when they were on their way: 'It's plain that banks are bunk, like everything else these days. Let's stick to our humble line where we know what we're doing.' But, having been studying bank robbing, we had got ourselves nerved up to take desperate chances—and we bulled the regular game in Levant. Coarse work, because we were off our stride. All due to the bank. The bank stands liable for damages. We're up here collecting. Cashier, consider what regular and desperate cracksmen would have done to you! Considering our carefulness where you were concerned, and the trouble we have been put to in getting out and chasing you, what say?"

Again Vaniman got a strong grip on his emotions. He was a fugitive; these cheeky rascals had his fate in their hands; he was not in a position to reply to their effrontery as his wild desire urged. He did not dare to open his mouth just then with any sort of reply; he did not trust himself even to look their way.

"Think it over," advised the short man, composedly. "But please take note that there are now four of us in on the split, and that quartering it makes easy figuring."

Mr. Wagg was not composed. This threat to disrupt his fifty-fifty plan brought him out of something that was like stupor. "You belong back in state prison, and I'll see to it that you're put there."

The man who called himself Bill was not ruffled. He waved his arm to indicate the spread of the landscape. "Doesn't being up here above the world lift you out of the rut of petty revenge? Can't you see things in a broader way? I can. I feel like praising you for that job you put up to get our valuable friend out where he can help all four of us. For many a day, after I saw that you had this friend out in the yard and were interested in him, I tended less to making harness pads and more to watching you through the shop window. I was interested in the gent, too. Tom and I had made up our minds to be as patient as possible for seven years—and then be rusticating up in these hills, right on hand to help him in the chore of digging it out of whatever hole it's hidden in. Couldn't let you monopolize him—absolutely not, Mr. Guard! Do you think I was hiding out that noon only by luck and chance? No, no! I saw you monkeying with the chimney door that forenoon. I saw how you were hopping around and I got a good look at your face. Says I to myself, Tom not being handy, 'There's something to be pulled off, and I'll make sure how it is pulled.' That's how I happened to be on the business side of that shield, Mr. Guard. It was good work. It leaves our friend pretty comfortable, so far as the dicks are concerned. Tom and I have got to keep dodging 'em. We didn't have your advantages, you know—Tom and I didn't! We simply did the best we could in getting out—realizing the value of time."

The short man was employing a patronizing tone, as if accomplishing an escape from state prison was merely a matter of election of methods. All of the guard's official pride was in arms. He advanced on the convict and shook a finger under his nose. "How did you get out? You don't dare to tell me. It was an accident. You didn't use any brains. You don't dare to tell, I say!"

"Oh yes, I do!" The convict was placid. "I'll tell you because you'll never dare to open your mouth on the matter. Furthermore, you've got to understand the position Tom and I are in right now in regard to a third party. That party is a trusty—he gets out in three months from now and has been having the run of the corridors as a repair man."

Wagg growled something.

"Oh yes, he will!" asseverated the convict. "He'll come out on time! A fine show of yourself you'll make trying to dutch him. The pen is mightier than the sword, but inside a prison pen the little screw driver has 'em all faded when a trusty is the repair man. Cell door, tier door, attic door—all attended to; ventilator grating likewise. Rope in ventilator, up rope—out goes rope and down rope! Roof, wall, drop! Rear window of second-hand shop. Outfit! Hike! Good start, till morning shows the cot dummies! Truss rods of Wagner freight, blind baggage to Levant on the 'tween-days train. Into the bush—and here!"

"With this added by me," put in the other convict. "That trusty was a pal in the old days. He understands his friends' financial interest is in this thing, and how we needed to get out sudden to tend to that interest. We have given him our word. He took that word like it was a certified check. And he's going to cash in on that word!"

"He sure is!" declared the short man. "We pass words instead of checks in our business, and a man who lets his promise go to protest is crabbed for keeps. We have incurred obligations so as to get in at the split." He spread out his palm and tapped a digit into the center of it. "Cash—here!"

"Strictly on a business basis, of course," said the tall man. "We don't call for a special split for that trusty. It's a personal debt incurred by Bill and me. We ask nobody to pay our personal debts. All we ask is that debts due us be paid. And we're drawing a sight draft on you gents. Bill and I are probably only a few jumps ahead of the dicks. Where's the coin?"

He brutally thrust the question at Vaniman. The young man turned to Wagg, seeking support in that crisis, believing that the affair could be held on the basis of two against two in the interests of further dilatory tactics. Wagg had been showing indignant protest against the demands of the interlopers. But his corrugated face was smoothed suddenly. He had evidently decided to cash in on the new basis. "That's what I want to know—and what I have been trying to find out. Where's the coin?"

The realignment—three against one—was menacing. Vaniman surveyed the faces—the glowering demanding countenances, the eyes in which money lust gleamed. He knew that the men were in a mood where the truth would serve him in sad stead. He had no knack as a liar. He understood how little chance he had of convincing those shrewd knaves by his inept falsehoods in that extremity. He had already meditated on the plan of running away from Wagg. His reasons for escaping from this intolerable baiting were now threefold.

"It's too near sunset for a job that will take us a long way through the woods," he blurted.

"I'll admit I'm so tired I can't count money till I've had a night's sleep," confessed the short man. "But you make your promise now and here, Mr. Cashier. When?" He emphasized the last word.

"To-morrow!"

"A promissory note—dated and delivered. Don't let it go to protest. That's language you can understand, Mr. Bankman."

Vaniman walked off toward the cabin and the three men followed him.



CHAPTER XXVI

THE SHOW-DOWN

His troubles and his trials had not wholly dulled youth's sense of the ludicrous in Vaniman. He sat down that evening to the meal that had been prepared by Guard Wagg, late of the state prison, for three fugitive convicts, also late of that institution. The chimney of the kerosene lamp was smoky and the light was dim, therefore Vaniman's grin was hidden from his companions. Undoubtedly it would have produced no especial wonderment in them if they had noted his cheerful visage. They were decidedly cheerful, themselves. Mr. Wagg was no longer exhibiting the official side of his nature; he was receiving compliments on his biscuits. The three who had aligned themselves against Vaniman seemed to be getting along in a very friendly fashion, being bound by a common interest.

From biscuits in hand the conversation passed to the prison fare in retrospect. Wagg admitted that the fare was a disgrace to the state. From that point it was easy to go on and agree with the short man and the tall man that the prison was mismanaged generally and that a man was lucky in being able to get away from such a place—no matter whether he was a guard or a prisoner. The incongruous friendliness increased Vaniman's amusement.

He looked at the two knaves who had recently enlightened their victim in such a matter-of-fact manner. He admitted that the comedy overbalanced the tragedy, in view of the fact that the job had resolved itself into petty sneak-thievery. Taking into consideration the trick money they had found, there was considerable farce in the affair. However, Vaniman, looking ahead to the threatening to-morrow, perceived tragedy looming again.

Victim, criminals, guard of the criminals, they were breaking bread in a temporary comradeship of a bizarre nature—a money quest. But that money interest which bound them of an evening would be a disastrous problem on the morrow, if one man attempted to stand out against three.

The one man made up his mind that there was a risky resource for him—to flee and take his chances alone in the woods; he had decided to put his own personal interpretation on the promise, "To-morrow!"

Right after supper he turned into his bunk, in order to simulate slumber and avoid the questions that he could not answer.

The two new arrivals had had much to say about their weariness. He expected that they would promptly eliminate themselves as obstacles to flight. Mr. Wagg, at any rate, had shown a confiding disposition all along.

But the tall man and the short man conferred sotto voce and let it be known that they had suspended payment of confidence currency for the time being.

"The idea is," explained the short man, "this being a pleasant party, and all interests being common, it would be a shame to have it broken up. Tom will sit there in the door for two hours—then he wakes me and I sit there. We're not accusing anybody inside of wanting to leave; but who is sure that somebody from the outside may not stroll along and want to come in? Seeing that we went down to the pen from Levant, it may be thought—providing they do any thinking at the state prison—that we have come back here to start in where we left off. On the other hand, providing they don't do any thinking, they may come up into this section because a reasoning man never would believe we'd take chances by coming back into an old stamping ground. Either way it's looked at, we've got to be careful. Therefore, we hope that gents of a pleasant party will consider this double-shift arrangement as being for the general good of all hands."

Mr. Wagg was pleased. He said so unhesitatingly, but not tactfully. He declared that he would mortally hate to be surprised keeping the company he was in.

Vaniman was able to stay awake through most of the two watches. But the short man on sentry go was more vigilant than the tall man had been; two hours of sleep and the keen hope for the morrow conspired to keep the guard alert. In despair the young man loosed his hold on the hateful verities and slipped into slumber.

He was suddenly awakened by a pinching grip on his arm. He opened his eyes upon broad day and upon the face of the tall man. He was aware that the short man was shaking Wagg awake in the next bunk. "Two men coming up the side of the mountain; got a slant at 'em through the trees; they're after us!"

"Sho!" demurred Wagg. "They're only bird hunters."

"We're taking no chances on 'em being jailbird hunters! Are there any holes here in the rocks?"

"Plenty," stated Wagg. "And the three of you better hunt them holes, no matter who is coming."

The short man, the tall man, and Vaniman needed no urging on that point. They ran, crouching low, and scrambled out of sight among the ledges of the craggy peak of Devilbrow.

Wagg lighted his pipe and went out and sat on the bench beside the camp's door, and when the two early visitors came puffing up the hill and confronted him he was to all appearances enjoying the delights of a bland fall morning and the comfort of an unruffled conscience. He jumped to his feet and hailed one of the men with a great show of cordiality; the man was one of the deputy wardens of the state prison.

Mr. Wagg hopefully and guilelessly expressed the conviction that the officer had followed along into the wilderness in order to join in the process of recuperation.

The deputy asserted that Mr. Wagg was wrong to the extent of a damsite, or something of the sort, and reported some recent happenings at the state prison, Mr. Wagg listening with appropriate, shocked, official concern. He opined that it was a long shot, figuring that the convicts had fled back to the region of Levant. The warden agreed. "But the Old Man is bound to have us tip over every flat rock, Bart. He got a call-down for that accident—and this matter on top of it has made him sore. I'm up here this far because I got a line on you at Levant."

"You did, hey?" Mr. Wagg gazed off across the landscape, as if wondering how much of a trail he had left.

"You dropped 'recuperates' like a molting rooster drops feathers, Bart," averred the warden, jocosely. "That was my trail. Reckoned I'd come and tip you off so that you can do a little scouting for the good cause."

Mr. Wagg threw out his chest. "You can leave this hill section to me. Always on the job! That's my motto."

The deputy said he knew that, stated that he would probably spend a week along the highways and in the villages of the section, got a drink of water from a spring near at hand, and departed with his aide.

And after the two were far down the slope, Mr. Wagg called in his campmates with the caution of a hen partridge assembling the brood after the hunter has passed. "It means that we've got to stick close by this camp and mind our business for a week, at any rate," he said, after he had reported the conversation.

Vaniman could not keep the complacency out of his countenance. He caught the short man squinting at him with a peculiar expression. "It would be mighty dangerous for any one of us to go far from this camp," said the young man.

"It sure would!" agreed the convict, sententiously.

Vaniman was promptly conscious that his innocent air had not been convincing.

He became more fully aware of that fact when the tall man and the short man resumed guard duty that night, turn about. It was plain that they proposed to hang grimly to the token in their possession until the token could be cashed in for the coin.

The confinement behind prison bars had tested Vaniman's powers of endurance; this everlasting espionage by the men who had set themselves over him tried him still more bitterly. They lacked the sanction of the law which even an innocent man respects while he chafes. While that situation continued he was prevented from taking any step toward clearing up his tangled affairs. He could look down on the roofs of the village of Egypt and meditate savagely—and that was all. Vona had apprised him of Britt's plans regarding a mansion. He could see that structure was taking shape rapidly. Men swarmed over it like bees over a hive. He did not doubt the loyalty of the girl. But he was left to wonder how long her loyalty to the memory of a dead man would endure.

Day by day, through dragging hours, he suffered from the agonizing monotony of the camp. But the future offered only a somber prospect. After this respite in the insistence of the treasure seekers, he could expect only ugly determination when they dared to make a move in the matter. They had plenty of leisure for talk. They were already spending that money! Wagg was even more impatient than the others.

Though Vaniman had been cruelly tortured by thoughts of the injustice that had been visited on him, by his reflections that the Egyptians had shown him no consideration, he had nursed the hope that he might contrive to give them back their money after he had dragged from Britt the truth.

But at last, in his new spirit of loneliness, in the consciousness that no man's hand was offered to him in the way of help, he entered upon a new phase of resolution. He had gone into prison with youth's ingenuous belief that the truth would prevail. He had permitted a lie to aid in prying his way out, and now he was paltering with evasions and making no progress except toward more dangerous involvement. One afternoon sudden fury swept the props out from under caution.

He leaped up from the rock on which he had been sitting, pondering, the rumble of the conspirators' conversation serving as obbligato for the cry his soul was uttering. He was between them and the sunset sky.

"The truth!" he shouted.

The three men peered at him, shading their eyes. He seemed to tower with heroic stature. He came at them, shaking his fists over his head.

"You are thieves and renegades. I don't believe you know the truth when you hear it. But you're going to hear it."

He tackled Wagg first. He set the grip of both of his hands into the slack of the shoulders of the amazed guard's coat and yanked Wagg to his feet and shouted, with his nose barely an inch from Wagg's face, "I told you the truth at first. I said I didn't know where the money was. You gave me a chance to get out by a lie. I'm human. I took the chance."

He threw Wagg from him with a force that sent the man staggering; the guard stumbled over a rock and fell on his back.

He turned on the convicts. By his set-to with Wagg he had gained their full attention. "You low-lived scoundrels, do you know an honest man when you lay eyes on him? I declare that I am one. Dispute me, and I'll knock your teeth down your throats—guns or no guns. I don't know where the money is. I never touched that money. I didn't know what was in those sacks. If you were decent men, with any conception of an oath before God, I'd swear to the truth of what I say. I won't lower myself to make oath! I make the statement. And now let some of you—or all three of you—stand up in front of me and tell me that I'm lying. Come on! It's an open field!"

They did not stand up. Wagg merely sat up.

"Say something! Some one of you! Say something!" pleaded Vaniman through his set teeth.

The convicts kept their sitting. Vaniman went on adjuring them to stand up and say something. They showed no resentment when he called them names, and they indicated no relish for battle.

"Hold on a minute!" pleaded the short man. "You seem to have your mind well made up as to what we'd better not say. I may have to eat state-prison grub again, and I'll need my teeth. Won't you kindly drop a hint as to what would suit you in the line of talk?"

"You can tell me whether you think I'm handing you the truth or not."

"I think you are," agreed Bill, readily.

"So do I," asserted Tom.

"How about you, Wagg?" Vaniman demanded, resolved on clearing the matter up once for all.

But the lethargic Mr. Wagg was manifestly unable to turn his slow wits on the single track of the mind and start them off in the opposite direction.

"No matter about him now," said the short man. "Give his mind time. A toadstool grows fast after it gets started."

This meek surrender helped Vaniman to regain his poise. "If you're willing to take the truth from me, men, I'll meet you halfway. You have been frank and open with me. Men who pretend to be better than you, they have lied to me and about me. That's why I was sent to state prison."

"Tom and I couldn't do business like we do if we lied to folks of our kind. Didn't we cash in our word to the trusty? Being in the hole, as you are right now, you'll excuse me for saying that we consider you one of our kind."

"Thank you," returned the young man, accepting that statement at face value.

The short man lighted a cigarette and pondered for a few moments. "You didn't take the money. Tom and I believe what you say. Wagg will catch up with the procession later. All right, Vaniman! But seeing how anxious you were to get out and up here, it's likely that you have a pretty good idea as to who did take the money. If you need any help in squaring yourself, I'll call your attention to the fact that here are a couple of gents who have a little spare time on their hands."

Vaniman was then in no mood to balance the rights and the wrongs of the case. "I have started in on the basis of the whole truth, and I'm coming through, men. I'm following your lead. I was framed in that bank matter. There was a man who had the opportunity to exchange junk for that gold. He made that opportunity for himself by working on my good nature. The man is Tasper Britt, who was the president of that bank. He took the money. He knows where it is."

"Do you think he is the only one who knows?"

"Naturally, he wouldn't be passing the word around."

"You're a bank man—you had the run of the premises—you had a chance to know the general style of his ways! What do you guess he did with it?"

"I'm sticking to the truth—and what I actually know. I'm not guessing."

"Not even when you say he took the money?"

"I didn't see him take it. But he had a private entrance to the vault. Everybody was so determined to plaster the guilt on to me that no move was made against Britt on account of that back door of his. I was railroaded by perjurers—and Britt was the captain of 'em."

"There's a corner on 'most everything these days, but it's really too bad for a man like Britt to have a corner on so much valuable knowledge," sighed the short man.

And the tall man sighed and agreed.

Mr. Wagg was catching up. With the appearance of a man who had been running and was out of breath he panted, "What's—what's gong to be done about it?"

Vaniman made no suggestions. Having cut the knot of his own entanglement where these men were concerned, he felt no spirit of alacrity about inviting them farther into his personal affairs; he realized that he had merely shifted the course of their dogged pursuit of that money. In spite of his feelings toward Britt, he was dreading what might come from the disclosures he had just made. He had reason to distrust the tactics such men might employ. His relief arising from the show-down was tinged with regret; he was still sorry for the innocent losers in Egypt. To employ two escaped convicts and a recreant prison guard in his efforts to prevail on Britt and secure the rights due an innocent man promised to involve him more wretchedly.

"Vaniman, suppose you take command and give off your orders," said the short man.

"I haven't any sensible plans. I admit that. I have been so pestered and wrought up by the everlasting bullyragging about the devilish money that I haven't had a chance to figure out a way of getting at the man who has ruined me," Vaniman complained. He strode to and fro, snapping his fingers, revealing his sense of helplessness.

"Suppose we sleep on the thing—the whole four of us," suggested the short man. "I said sleep, please note! This general show-down has cleared the air up here a whole lot, I'll say! And Wagg has steered away the dicks! They won't be strolling in, and till we have settled on a plan I'm sure nobody will feel like strolling out. The night watch is disbanded."

He marched off toward the camp. The others trailed on behind him.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE STIR OF THE YEAST

Mr. Delmont Bangs was naturally of an observant nature. While he was in Egypt he was keeping his eyes particularly wide open. He was looking for two men wanted by the state. Mr. Bangs was the deputy warden who had gone up to the summit of Devilbrow in order to view the landscape o'er and pass the word to Mr. Wagg. Mr. Bangs rode along every highway and byway, day after day, not missing a trick. He was not especially sanguine in regard to locating the missing convicts in that section, but he was obeying the warden's orders; after a day or so he was also obeying an impulse to satisfy his curiosity in lines quite apart from his official quest.

He spent his nights at Files's tavern and grabbed his meals wherever he happened to be.

But after a time he found that housewives were unwilling to give him anything to eat. He was sure that they had not soured on him because he was a state catchpole. When he first arrived in town and gave out the news of his mission and issued a general call for tips he was welcomed heartily by everybody; the women, especially, hoped that he would find the villains and put them where they could not threaten unprotected females. Mr. Bangs had not been able to spend his money for food at farmhouses; the women would not accept any pay, and gave him their best.

However all at once they could not be induced to give food or even to sell it. They acted as if they did not care to be bothered; some of them declared that they were too busy to do cooking. They would not allow Mr. Bangs to stick his nose into their houses; they snapped refusal at him from behind doors only partially opened and foot-braced.

Men with whom Bangs conversed wore an air of abstraction. They plainly were not interested in Mr. Bangs or in the convicts whom he was pursuing. He tackled them on all sorts of subjects, hoping to hit on the topic which was absorbing so much of their attention. He went so far as to ask them bluntly what they were carrying on their minds besides hair. Those who were not surly looked scared.

Even the barn doors were no longer frankly open. There was a mysterious sort of subsurface stir everywhere. There was expectancy that was ill disguised. Mr. Bangs, a stranger, perceived that strangers, for some unexplained reason, had ceased to be popular in Egypt. One day a man gruffly told him that detectives would do well to go off and do their detecting in some other place. That was pretty blunt, and Mr. Bangs informed his helper that he, personally, had had about enough of the gummed-up, infernal town. He declared that he was going to leave. Mr. Bangs was more certain about his departure when he arrived back at Files's tavern that evening. Mr. Files informed him that there would be no more accommodations at the tavern after that night. Mr. Files, questioned, refused to say whether he intended to close the tavern or was merely going away; he would reveal nothing about his further plans.

Mr. Bangs went out and sat on the porch bench with his helper, and irefully asked that bewildered person what the ding-dong the matter was with the dad-fired town, anyway?

In default of specific knowledge the aide tried to be humorous. He told Mr. Bangs that it looked as if the hive was getting ready to swarm. His facetiousness fell flat; Mr. Bangs scowled. The helper became serious.

"I've been watching the old hystrampus they call the Prophet. Everywhere we've been the past few days, he seems to be just coming or just going. Noticed him, haven't you?"

"Of course I've noticed him."

"I don't know what his religious persuasion is, because he hasn't done any talking where I could overhear him. But he seems to be getting busier all the time. Do you know what he preaches?"

"I'm working for the state prison, not the state insane asylum."

"Well," drawled the other, "though I don't know what he's preaching, the general fussed-up condition here in this town reminds me of what happened in Carmel when I lived there as a boy. One of them go-upper preachers struck town. He finally got most of our neighbors into a state of whee-ho where the womenfolks made ascension robes for all concerned and the menfolks built a high platform and they all climbed up on it and waited all one night for Gabr'el's trump to sound."

"What's that got to do with this town?" demanded Mr. Bangs, impatiently.

"Why, considering how near busted the town is—and all the timber cut off and the farms run out—I wouldn't wonder a mite if the right kind of a preacher could get 'em into a frame of mind where they'd be willing to start for anywhere—even straight down, provided they couldn't arrange matters so as to go straight up, like the Carmel folks planned on. Not as how I say that these folks are going to get up and hump it out of Egypt! But there's a whole lot of restle-ness in 'em! That's plain enough to be seen!"

"If there's half as much of it in 'em as there is in me, right now, they'll all follow me when I drive out of town in the morning," declared Mr. Bangs. "And what that king pin, name o' Britt, is building that palace over there for is beyond my guess."

"Expects to grab off the girl of the Vaniman case," said the aide, who had put himself in the way of hearing all the local gossip.

Mr. Bangs lighted a fresh cigar. "Say, I'd like to find out whether this stir here is a go-upper proposition. I'd join the party and go up, too, if I thought I could locate that cashier and find out where he hid that mess of gold."

"Try the ouija board," giggled the aide.

However, in his desperate desire for information in general Mr. Bangs proceeded to try something which suited better his practical turn of mind.

He hailed Prophet Elias, who had appeared in the open door of Usial Britt's shop. The gloom of the autumn evening was deepened by vapor which came drifting from the lowlands after the night air had chilled the moisture evoked by the sun from the soil. The open door set a patch of radiance on the dun robe of the dusk. The light spread upon the vapor, was diffused in it, furnished an aura of soft glow in the center of which stood the robed figure.

Deputy Bangs's first hail, when Elias opened the door and stood revealed, was contemptuously brusque; he used the tone he commonly employed toward his charges in prison; he perceived at first only the queer old chap, the dusty plodder of the highways, the man of cracked wits. Bangs spoke as an officer, peremptorily: "Say, you! Come over here. I want to talk with you!"

The Prophet made no move, either with his feet or his tongue. In the haze that lay between him and Bangs, the man of the robe seemed to tower and to take on a mystic dignity which had been lacking in the candid light of day. After the silence had continued for some time Bangs spoke again. His new manner showed that his eyes had been reprimanding his tongue. "Excuse me! I didn't mean to sound short. But would you kindly step across here? Or"—the eyes certainly had shamed the tongue and had humbled it—"or I'll come over there, if you'd rather have it that way."

The Prophet strode along the misty path of light and stood in the middle of the road. "Talk—but I must ask you to talk to the point and in few words. I have no time to waste on gossip."

"All right! Few words it is! What's the matter with this town all of a sudden?"

"Ask Pharaoh. The kingdom is his."

"I don't get you!"

The deputy's helper pulled his chief's sleeve and hissed some rapid words of explanation, more fruit gathered from local gossip.

"Oh, so that's what you call him? However, I'm asking you. You ought to know. I've seen you all over the lot, talking with everybody."

"Ask Pharaoh!" repeated the Prophet, sonorously.

The helper nudged Bangs with a swift punch. "If you feel like taking that advice, boss, here's your chance. There's Tasper Britt."

The magnate of Egypt was revealed suddenly, coming from the direction of his new mansion. He strode past Elias. "Ask Pharaoh!" advised the Prophet once more, and Britt halted. He came back a few steps and addressed the men on the tavern porch:

"Can't a man who is deputy warden of our state prison find something for amusement better than stirring up a lunatic?"

"I'm not trying to find amusement—not in this town," returned Mr. Bangs. "I'm after information. He refers me to you—or so I take it!"

"What information?"

"There's something the trouble in this town and I'd like to know what it is."

"There it is," barked Britt, pointing to Elias. "That's the principal trouble—a lunatic spreading lunacy like smallpox."

"But what is it all about?" insisted Bangs, "What's this new excitement?"

"I know nothing about any excitement, sir. I attend to business instead of gossip. If you can make it your business to take this pest to state prison, where he probably belongs if his record could be dug up, the town of Egypt will be all right again."

"Pharaoh, I have a message of comfort for you," stated the Prophet. "This night do I depart from the land of Egypt. I go and I shall not return."

For some moments Britt did not find words with which to reply. Then he mumbled something about good riddance and shaking the dust from the feet.

"I shall shake all the dust from my feet this side of the border line," said Elias. "Your land of Egypt cannot spare any soil."

"You are getting away just in time," rasped the usurer. "I have been tolerating you since you got back from jail because I've been too busy to tend to your case."

"Ah!" commented Elias, mildly.

This subtle humility goaded Britt's wrath more effectually than the Prophet could have prevailed with resentful retort.

"The next time it wouldn't have been a bailable trespass case. Do you dare to tell me why you kept looking in at the windows of my house?"

"I was looking for the closet."

"What closet?"

"For the closet where you keep the skeleton. But rest this night in peace, Pharaoh. I am going away."

"I can sleep better for knowing that you are out of this town."

"Then promise me that you will sleep to-night—sleep soundly. That thought will cheer me as I go on my way." Britt started along, making no reply. "I bespeak for you sleep without dreams," the Prophet called after him. "Your dreams, Pharaoh, might be colored with some of the realities—and that would be bad, very bad for your peace of mind."

Once more Britt strode back from the vapors. "Are you trying to provoke me to smash my fist into your face? Are you trying to cook up a blackmail damage suit by the advice of that crook lawyer who bailed you out? I'm beginning to see why a lawyer was enough interested in you to get you back into this town."

"You guess shrewdly, Pharaoh. You have avoided the deep plot against your wealth. Let the thought make you sleep soundly to-night. I'm glad to make my confession and hope it will add to your peace of mind."

Usial Britt had appeared in the door of his cottage; he leaned lazily against the jamb. "It will be a fine night for sleeping," he remarked, amiably. "This fog is sort of relaxing to the nerves!"

"Hold one moment, Pharaoh!" pleaded Elias. The appearance of the hated brother had started the magnate off once more. "I am anxious to make your night a peaceful one. If you see me go away, knowing that I shall not return again before your face, the comfort of your knowledge will lull you to sleep. Wait!"

He stepped to the door of the cottage, reached inside, and secured a long staff. He picked up from the floor a huge horn—a sort of trump. He settled the curve of the instrument over his shoulder. He blew a long and resounding blast. Then he marched away, taking long strides. He loomed in the first stratum of the vapor, the radiance from the open door showing him as an eerie figure; then the fog swallowed him up. Every few moments he sounded a mighty blast on the trump. The blare of the horn rolled echoes afar in the murk. Steadily the volume of the sound decreased; it was plain that the Prophet was traveling at good speed.

"Well, I'll be dimdaddled!" grunted Mr. Bangs. His was the only comment on the departure of Prophet Elias from the land of Egypt—that is to say, the only comment passed by the group in front of Files's tavern. Tasper Britt went his way toward the Harnden home, his lodgings still. Usial Britt closed his cottage door. Bangs found the sticky chill of the fog uncomfortable. He and his helper went in and upstairs to their rooms.



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SHADE WHO MEDDLED

Sometime in the night Vaniman awoke, not suddenly, or with the sense of having been disturbed, but torpidly, with the feeling that he had been especially deep in slumber. He recovered his senses slowly. Therefore, only gradually did he become aware of a peculiar new condition of affairs in the camp. He wondered idly, trying to make up his mind as to what was different in the place this night. He heard the "yeak-yeak" of the crickets outside. He heard nothing else. Then he understood. His three comrades were not vocalizing their slumber in snores. He had endured the torture philosophically night after night.

His surprise awakened him fully. He listened, but he could not hear the sound of breathing. He rolled out of his bunk and investigated. The light in the camp was merely the reflection of the paler hue of the night outside, filtering through the open door and the single window. But he perceived that he was alone in the place—the bunks were empty.

His primitive life in the camp had inured him to new habits; he had been removing only his shoes and his coat when he went to bed. He pulled on his shoes—he did not bother with coat or hat. He rushed out of doors and called aloud, hoping that his panic was exaggerating his apprehensions. There was no answer.

Then his fears took definite shape and sought for confirmation. He ran to the horse hovel. The animal was gone.

Standing there, bitterly conscious of what had happened and acutely aware of what was likely to happen with those three miscreants on the trail of the treasure that they coveted, Vaniman accepted his full measure of responsibility. He did not excuse the passion which had prompted him to open his heart in regard to Tasper Britt. It was plain that they intended to unlock the secret of the money by the use of Britt, going to any lengths of brutality the occasion might demand. To get at Britt they would be obliged to invade the Harnden home. The thought of what might develop from that sortie wrought havoc in Vaniman's soul! His fears for Vona and her mother spurred him to action even more effectively than his conviction that his own cause was lost if the men were able to force the money from Britt. If they were captured it would be like them to incriminate Vaniman as an accomplice; if they got safely away with the treasure there could be no revelations regarding Britt's complicity in its concealment. Britt certainly would not tell the truth about what had happened to him; the fugitives would hide their secret and their plunder.

If ever a victim of devilish circumstances had a compelling reason to play the game, single-handed and to the full limit of desperation, so Vaniman told himself, he was the man.

He ran from the hovel to the peak of the crag that overlooked the village of Egypt. He beheld below him a vast expanse of grayish white, the fleecy sea of the enshrouding vapor. He heard no sounds, he saw no lights. He had no notion of the hour. Wagg had accommodated him with the time of day, when he asked for it, just as Wagg loaned him a razor and doled his rations, persistently and with cunning malice working to subdue the young man's sense of independence.

But in this crisis all of Vaniman's courage broke from the thralls in which prison intimidation and a fugitive's caution and despair had bound it during the months of his disgrace.

No matter how long the others had been on their way! They would be obliged to go the long route around the hill, and were hampered by the van; their grim forethought in taking the vehicle to transport their booty, as if they were sure of succeeding, was another element that wrought upon Vaniman's temper.

As he was, without coat or hat, he leaped from the crag, as if he were trying to jump squarely into the middle of the village of Egypt. He had taken no thought of the steepness of the slope or the dangers of descent. He slipped and rolled for many rods and a rain of rocks and earth followed him and beat upon him when he caught a tree and clung to it. He went on more cautiously after that; blood trickled from the wounds on his face where the sharp edges of rocks had cut. He thrust himself through the scrub growth, opening a way with the motions of a swimmer, his hands scarred by the tangled branches. There were other steep places that were broken by terraces. When he was down from the rocky heights on which the vapor did not extend and had entered the confusing mists, he was obliged to go more slowly still, for he narrowly missed some nasty falls.

Fierce impatience roweled him. He would not allow himself to weaken his determination by thinking on what he would do after he arrived at the Harnden home. He had set that as his goal. Above other considerations he placed his frenzied resolution to protect Vona. He realized that he must protect her even from himself—from the shock she would suffer by his unprefaced appearance, this lover who would come like one risen from the dead! The scoundrels who came seeking Britt in her home would not be as terrifying as the visitor who would seem to be a specter—the shade of the convict whom a mountain had crushed, so said the official reports of the tragic affair.

The fact that he was rushing to meet in combat three men, armed and desperate, worried him less than his anguished concern in behalf of the girl who was unprepared for his advent by hint or warning.

At last he came to the pasture slopes where he was more sure of his footing. He ran. When he heard the rumble of wheels he stopped in order to listen, trying to distinguish the location of the sound in the fog, which made direction uncertain. He knew it must be late. Few vehicles were moved in Egypt after dark. He suspected that what he heard was the van.

However, he was puzzled by what he was hearing. Either there were many vehicles, or else the echoes were playing pranks in the mists which enwrapped all objects. Under the pall of fog all sounds were exaggerated. To right and left, near at hand and far away he heard the rumble of wheels, the creak of whiffletrees, and the plodding feet of animals.

He heard, too, an occasional, dust-choked bleat or a plaintive lowing.

But a sound that was repeated regularly he could not understand, nor could he determine the direction from which it came. It was sound diffused like the fog itself. It was mellowed by distance. He recognized the notes as the winding of some sort of a horn or trump.

Vaniman's ears were telling him nothing definite. He hurried on down the hill so that he might make his eyes serve him at closer range. In order to see what was going on in the highway he was obliged to go close to the wall which bordered it; though the fog hindered, it helped, for in the obscurity he was well hidden among the bushes.

First he saw a hayrack go past. Two horses drew it. It was piled high with household goods, and women and children were on top of the load. Two cows were hitched on behind. By the time the fog had hidden this conveyance a wagon of the jigger type rumbled past. It was as heavily loaded as the hayrack. He heard other vehicles coming—he heard still others far down the road on their way.

He was urged by a furious desire to shout—to ask what all this meant. But he did not dare to run such risks. There was a wall between him and the rest of humanity until his sorry affairs could be straightened.

The highway gave him a clew as to his whereabouts; he had been lost in that wallow of vapor, unable to distinguish north from south. He retreated from the wall and stooped as he ran along behind the screen of the wayside alders. He had an affair of his own to look after, no matter what the rest of Egypt was doing.

In spite of his haste, he carefully scrutinized each item in this singular parade of the night, keeping near enough to the road for that purpose. It seemed like some sort of a migration. He wondered how comprehensive it was. He wanted to be sure that nobody in whom he was especially interested passed him without his knowledge. There was every kind of an equipage that would convey people or property. Nobody was talking. So far as was possible, the human beings in the procession seemed to be trying to make a secret of the affair. Mothers hushed their children when the youngsters chattered or whimpered. Men merely whispered commands to the horses.

All at once Vaniman beheld the van. It was holding a place in the parade and was moving with the decorous slowness of the other vehicles. On the driver's seat with Wagg were the two convicts. The comrade whom they had deserted waited until it had passed; then he ran out into the road and ducked along close to the rear of it.

They were coming away from the village of Egypt. To what extent had they succeeded in their rascally errand? What burden were they conveying? Vaniman could not curb his wild desire to find out. He had had plenty of experience in dodging into that van. He lifted the flap and leaped in. There was black darkness in there. He put out his hand cautiously. It touched a man. The move that the man made was a sort of fruitless struggle, indicating that his limbs were secured in some way.

Vaniman, in that crisis in his affairs, was not affected by squeamishness. He used his hands. He immediately discovered that the man was tied up hand and foot with torn cloth, strips of sheets or something of the kind. The man's only apparel was a nightshirt. Around his neck, so Vaniman's touch told him, was a leather cord to which keys were attached. Tasper Britt had told his cashier that he always carried his keys to bed with him in that fashion, and he had advised Vaniman to employ the same caution.

This prisoner in the van was certainly the magnate of Egypt. Vaniman found that a towel was bound tightly across the bearded mouth; the young man even ran his hand over the bald pate, now divested of its toupee.

There was no gold in the van. Vaniman made sure of that after he had satisfied himself as to the identity of Britt.

While the young man was endeavoring to steady his whirling thoughts, striving to plan some course of action by which he could turn the situation to his personal benefit, his attention became taken up in another quarter. Through the trap he heard the voice of the short man. "Quick! Off the road. Nobody's in sight!"

The van lurched and the front of it dipped with a violence that drove Vaniman and Britt against the end. Up came the front and the rear sagged. Then the van went bumping and swaying over uneven ground. The claw-clash of the branches of trees against the sides informed Vaniman that the men had driven into the woods.

When the vehicle halted, the young man crawled forward and huddled down into as compact a ball as he could make of himself.

He heard the three men dismounting. "I'll tell the world that this is a handy night for us, whatever it is that's going on in this burg!" It was the voice of that ever-ready spokesman, the short man. "There would have been a head at every window if we had been obliged to go teaming around all by ourselves, in the night. But they wouldn't have noticed a couple of giraffes and a hippopotamus in that procession."

"I couldn't see that they even paid any attention to those women squalling upstairs when we did the job," was the tall man's opinion. "Handy night, say you? Why, that man we braced up to and asked where was Britt's boarding house, he seemed to have so much of his own business on his mind that he wasn't wondering a mite what our business with Britt might be."

"Get busy!" said the other convict. "That business is only just beginning."

There was a stir of feet.

"Hold on!" It was the voice of Wagg, mumbling cautiously. "Tie your handkerchiefs over your faces like I'm doing."

"Right!" the short man agreed. "Always leave 'em guessing when you say good-by!"

A few moments later Wagg lifted the flap; Vaniman saw him outlined against the fog. The convicts reached in and pulled Britt out, and the flap was dropped.

"Look out!" the short man warned. "Loosen that towel only a little and hold your clutch on his gullet, bo! We're not any too far from that road, and we'll understand the good news if he'll only whisper it."

After a few moments he went on. "Man, we've got you—got you foul! You know where that gold coin is. Shut up! No argument. You tell us where it is. Then you won't get hurt. If you don't tell us, you will get hurt. Get busy with your mouth!"

In spite of his abhorrence at this method of extorting the truth, Vaniman was conscious of a feeling of comradeship with the three rapscallions at that moment. They were merely seeking loot. He was seeking the re-establishment of his honor and his love. He waited in the tense silence, straining every nerve to hear. No sound came to him. He wondered whether Britt, cowed, was whispering the information.

"Get busy, I tell you!"

Evidently the prisoner was obstinate.

Minute after minute the short man labored with the captive, the snarl in his insisting voice deepening into the diapason of malevolent threat.

But Britt said no word.

Vaniman, feeling that all the prospects of his life were at stake, decided to play a waiting game. In spite of their culpable motive, the men outside were serving as his aides in the crucial moment. They were demanding information which the usurer owed to the innocent.

"Oh, very well," said the master of ceremonies. "We'll go on with the rest of the program, then. One of you bring that side lamp and light it. And help me get this towel tighter. He's going to try some squalling."

Vaniman saw the flare of the lamp past the edge of the flap. He set his teeth and decided that he would not interfere. When he heard sounds which, muffled in the towel, were like the whines and grunts of a tortured animal, he stiffened his determination to await the issue.

"Now loosen the gag and let him talk! I reckon he has found something to say."

Vaniman heard louder groans. But Britt gave out no information.

"Back with the talk-tickler! Hold it closer! The same foot! We've got a good start on that one."

The man in the van felt his gorge rising, in spite of the fact that the victim was a relentless persecutor of others. The stifled accents of agony were dreadful.

After a time the short man spoke. Into three words he put the venom of a malice that would not be gainsaid. "Now, damn you!" His tone hinted at no regret for what had gone on before; it suggested that there was more to come; it was compelling demand that the captive should employ the respite that was offered.

Britt began to babble; there was a suggestion of partial mania in his tones. Vaniman could not understand what he was saying, but the sharp questions that were interjected by the manager of the affair—the queries that gimleted for additional information—suggested the line of confession that Britt was giving forth.

"Yes—in the bank! Where in the bank? . . . I heard that, but where? . . . In the basement, hey? Well, where in the basement? . . . Concrete block hey? . . . Come across! . . . Along here with that lamp, bo! . . . Exactly where is that block?"

Through Vaniman there flooded something that was almost a delirium of derring do. He did not know just what he would be able to perform—one against three. He did not dare to wait for any farther developments in the thing. He was possessed by the frantic fear that the knaves would use their information and beat him to the treasure. That the money was somewhere in the basement of Britt Block was enough for him at that juncture. He decided that the time for stealth was past. He would proclaim the news. He would tell his story. He would trust the case to the fair judgment of men.

He scrambled forward in the van and made a hasty survey of the situation. Britt was stretched on the ground. The two convicts were kneeling side by side, bending over their captive, and the short man was still plying Britt with questions. Their backs were toward the man in the van. Wagg was kneeling at Britt's feet, holding the carriage lamp, shielding the flare with a curved palm.

The posture of all three of them invited the attack that Vaniman instantly decided on. He could not hope that he would be offered a better opportunity.

He flung aside the flap, he leaped from the opening. Spreading his knees, he landed on the convicts, a knee on each back, and then he brought his hands toward each other with all his strength, cuffing their skulls together with a resounding crack. They fell across Britt. Vaniman was on his feet while Wagg was rising; the guard's slow mind was operating ineptly on his muscles. The young man felled Wagg with a vicious blow under the ear.

The convicts, knocked senseless, were on their faces, pinning Britt to the ground. The butts of the bulldog revolvers in their hip pockets were exposed. Vaniman snatched out the weapons. He aimed one of the revolvers at Wagg, who had struggled to his knees. "Your knife! Throw it to me! Quick!"

Under the menace of the gun Wagg obeyed.

The young man pocketed the guns for a moment. He rolled the reviving convicts off Britt and slashed the prisoner's bonds and tore the towel from his face. It was in his mind to force Britt to crawl into the van. He was regarding Britt as his chief witness and principal exhibit in the exposure he proposed to lay before the people of Egypt. In the back of Vaniman's head there may have been some sort of consideration for the man who had ruined him—scruples against leaving him with those renegades who had tortured him. However, the young man was conscious of the more compelling motive—to carry Britt along with him, to force Britt, before the eyes of men, to uncover the hiding place of the treasure.

He trained his guns on the three men, backing away from them in order to have them at a safe distance. Britt was on his knees. He was staring at Vaniman with unblinking eyes in which unmistakable mania was flaming. The attack on him in his bed that night, the blow that had stunned him so that the assailants might tie him up, the ride in the strange conveyance, the dreadful uncertainty of what it was all about—these matters had wrought cruelly upon the victim's wits. The torture by the flame had further unsettled his mind. And at that moment, coming down from the heavens, so it seemed, a dead man had appeared to him.

Britt's recent experience had rendered him incapable of surveying the thing from a normal viewpoint. He saw the man whom he had disgraced by plot and perjury, the man who was buried under tons of rock, so the state had officially reported, the man to whose return after seven years of punishment Britt had been looking forward with dread. He had slept more peacefully since that tragedy had been enacted at the prison. Britt was not admitting that this was a human being in the flesh. Already partially crazed by the manhandling from which he had suffered, he peered at this apparition, a mystic figure in the aura of the fog—the shade of Frank Vaniman, so his frantic belief insisted—and leaped up, screaming like a man who had gone stark, staring mad.

Before Vaniman had time to issue a command Britt ran away along the lane by which the van had entered the wood. He was an extraordinary figure in flight. His night robe fluttered behind as he ran. For the most part he hopped on one foot; he yelped with pain when he was obliged to set the blistered foot on the ground in order to recover his balance.

Vaniman did not stay to threaten the three men. He had their weapons and he did not fear them.

He ran after Britt.



CHAPTER XXIX

THE FOX WHO WAS RUN TO EARTH

Vaniman's first impulse was to overtake the fugitive. He wanted to have Britt in his grip, holding to him, forcing him to confess and restore.

But when Britt reached the highway and started in the direction of the village, saner second thought controlled the pursuer. Britt had become a self-operating proposition; Vaniman felt that, although sudden fright were spurring Britt, a fear more inherently characteristic was pulling the usurer on his race to the village—he had betrayed the hiding place of hard cash! He was rushing to protect it. By running to the treasure Britt would be betraying something of more moment to Vaniman than gold. The young man kept his distance, keeping the quarry in sight, running a few feet behind Britt in the fog.

In the mist the two were like the flitting figures of a fantasy. The road was still well filled with wains and pedestrians, following after those who had gone on ahead. The wains stopped; the pedestrians halted and gaped and gasped. Women cried out shrilly. Vaniman and Britt furnished an uncanny spectacle. The eyes which beheld them saw them only for an instant; the fog's curtain allowed each observer scant time to determine what these figures were. Britt, hairless, his face sickly white, his night gear fluttering, was as starkly bodeful as if he were newly risen from the grave, garbed in death's cerements. Vaniman's presence on the scene added to the terrifying illusion produced by Britt.

This pursuer had been officially proclaimed dead. They who beheld believed they saw a dead man. The face was smutched with blood. The eyes were wide and were set straight ahead. Vaniman was taking no chances on losing the man whom he was chasing.

After the first thrill of horror, wild curiosity stung the men of Egypt. They dropped the reins, those who were driving horses, and joined those who had turned in their tracks and were following the phantoms of the night.

In this fashion, with the rout and rabble behind and Vaniman close on his heels, Tasper Britt arrived at Britt Block—and even the statue in its niche seemed to goggle with amazed stare.

Britt did not stop to lift the loop of the leather thong over his head; with a fierce tug he broke the cord. He unlocked the door and rushed in.

After Vaniman followed, the men outside hesitated only momentarily. Their numbers gave them courage. They crowded into the corridor. Some of them were carrying the lanterns which they had used to light the way of the procession of carts.

Britt did not enter his office; he ran the length of the corridor and flung open the door which led to the basement. The pursuers kept on at the heels of Vaniman. But they took the precaution to allow the men with the lanterns to go ahead.

Britt went frantically at his work, paying no attention to anybody. In fact, he did not seem to realize that others were present. There was a heap of furnace wood in one corner of the basement; he began to heave that wood in all directions. One of the lanterns was smashed by a billet. The men in the place were obliged to dodge the flying sticks. Britt worked as if he were alone in the place. He talked to himself. "Demons are after it. Demons and dead men! The demons sha'n't have it. I told 'em where it was. But I'll take it away. The demons brought hell fire to make me tell. They brought a dead man. But they sha'n't have it."

"He's gone raving crazy!" cried an onlooker in shrill tones.

"Come on, men! Let's catch him and tie him up," suggested somebody else.

But they were prevented by fears which were made effective by influences which did not seem to partake wholly of human qualities.

In their concentrated interest in the active Britt they had been disregarding Vaniman, who was restraining himself, standing outside the radiance of the lanterns.

The next instant he leaped into the sight of all of them. He stood between them and Britt. He pulled his weapons. His blood-spotted face seemed a vision of the unreal; but the guns were unmistakably the agents which a human being would employ in an emergency. And there was a businesslike click in his tone. "Stand back, the whole of you! This is a show-down. Tasper Britt is confessing that he is a thief and a liar. Use your eyes."

They cowered back from the threat of the guns and did use their eyes. They saw Britt uncover a section of the basement floor of concrete. They saw him locate an iron ring that was cunningly concealed under a little square of concrete which he pried up with his finger nails. He tugged at the ring and lifted a slab. The men with the lanterns raised them high. The light glinted on gold—gold coins in bulk, naked of sacks.

A man had come thrusting through the crowd in the basement, hurrying in from the outside. It was Squire Amos Hexter. It was hard to determine from his expression which spectacle he found the more astounding—Frank Vaniman at bay, in the flesh, or the gold coins that Tasper Britt was dipping with both hands, sluicing them upon the concrete in jingling showers.

Squire Hexter did find his voice. "Good God!" he shouted.

"God is good!" said Vaniman. He threw the weapons into a far corner of the basement. "Squire Hexter, take charge of this thing. Here are plenty of witnesses."

The Squire went forward slowly. His lips moved without the sound of spoken word. He set the clutch of his hands on Vaniman's arms. He stared long and earnestly into the young man's eyes.

"I can't talk now," Vaniman quavered.

And the Squire seemed to know, out of his sympathy with men, that there was something for that case better than words. He put his arms around Vaniman and kissed him. "Come along home with me to Xoa, sonny."

Britt struggled to his feet, and groaned when his weight came on the tortured flesh. He looked about as if searching for something. "A basket!" he muttered. "I must find a basket."

He started forward and saw Vaniman in the hook of the Squire's arm. Whether increase of his mania or some sort of remorse prompted his utterance was not clear. "Take it back to Tophet with you! I didn't mean to keep it. I didn't know how to give it back. I took it so that they'd pen you up, out from under my feet. But even a thousand tons of rock can't pen you. I'm done trying. If this is what you're chasing me for, take it! Keep away from me."

He went through the crowd, beating his way with his fists.

"Shall we hold him, Squire?" called a man.

"Let him alone for just now! He can't go far in that shape. We'll attend to him after a little while." The Squire pulled himself together with the air of one who saw that the situation needed a commander. He singled responsible men from the crowd and ordered them to take charge of the coin.

"Come away with me," he urged Vaniman. "This is no place for our talk."

When they walked out of the building they saw no sign of Britt. "We'll let him alone," insisted the Squire. "There'll be no use in asking him questions till he's in his right mind. He'll probably get back his wits when he gets back his clothes."

"Squire Hexter, what's happening in this town to-night. What—"

"All in good time, sonny! Let's get home where Xoa is."

There were lights in the Squire's house. In spite of the fog, Vaniman perceived that there was a gray hint of dawn in the heavens. More acutely was he wondering what this universal vigil in Egypt signified. But reaction had overtaken him. He was in the mood to accept commands of any sort. He walked on in silence.

"You must stay out here till I break the thing to Xoa!"

The young man clung to the trellis of the porch for a few moments until Xoa flung wide the door. Supported in her embrace, he staggered into the sitting room.

"Cry, sonny! Cry a little," the Squire adjured him. "Put your head on Xoa's knee and have it out. It will tide you over till your own mother can comfort you."

But wild desire for knowledge burned the sudden tears out of Vaniman's eyes. "Where is Vona? What is happening?"

"We'll see to it mighty quick that Vona knows, sonny. The right word must get to her in the right way. Mother will know how. Mother, you'd better attend to it."

She agreed with that suggestion, but first she brought a basin and water and soft cloths and solicitously made more presentable the young man's face.

While she ministered to him he told them what had been happening in his affairs.

"You're alive. That's the main point. Now, Xoa," urged the Squire, "go to Vona before some lunatic tells her something to scare her to death!"

The good woman hastened away, her smile reassuring the lover.

For some time the Squire regarded Vaniman with an expression into which some of the old notary's whimsical humor began to creep. "So it struck you, did it, that you had dropped back into town on a lively night? I was expecting quite a general stir, myself. But I'll confess that the thing hit me as livelier than what I had looked for when I was sitting here and heard a man holler outside that your ghost had chased Tasper Britt into his office. You see, the plan was not to have Tasper disturbed by any human beings this night. We all hoped he would sleep sound. Everybody proposed to tiptoe when passing in the neighborhood of the Harnden house. But to have a ghost come and chase Tasper around town was wholly outside the calculations of the human beings in Egypt this night."

"I'm afraid I don't see any joke hidden in this proposition, Squire," the young man complained.

"Son, it's a joke, but it's so big and ironic that only one of those gods on high Olympus is big enough and broad-minded enough to be able to laugh at it. Some day the folks of this town will be able to look back on this night and laugh, I do hope. But not now. They're too much wrought up. They're too busy. Hold on! I'm going to let another man explain the thing. He's in a position to pass out information more to the point than anything I can hand you. I'll simply say this. When you saw what you beheld in the fog this night, you were seeing a revised version of the Book of Exodus acted out in real life. The Children of Israel, of this day and date, are departing from the land of Pharaoh, current edition. With their flocks and their possessions, their wives and their children, they are on their way to The Promised Land. And now, if you'll step into the parlor with me I'll introduce you to the promiser."

Vaniman followed



CHAPTER XXX

THE PROMISED LAND

There was a big man in the parlor, a hearty-looking man, manifestly of the metropolis, patently of the "good sport" type. He was walking up and down. With his tweed knickerbockers, his belted jacket, his diamonds in his scarf and on his fingers, he was such an odd figure in the homely surroundings that he produced on Vaniman a surprise effect. The young man surveyed the stranger with the interest one might take in a queer animal in a circus van; the big man's restless pacing suggested a caged creature. But he took not the least interest in Vaniman, an unkempt individual without a coat.

"Hexter, what did happen, anyway? I thought you were never coming back. I had a good mind to chase you up, though it would be poor judgment for me to show myself to-night."

"This has happened!" The Squire pointed to Vaniman. The big man cocked an inquiring eyebrow, looking at the Squire's exhibit with indifference. "Colonel, this is Frank Vaniman. You know all about the case!"

The stranger stepped back so hastily that he knocked over a chair.

"Know about the case!" he bawled. "No, I don't know about it, either, if this is the man the mountain fell on—or whatever it was that happened. What kind of con is this you're giving me, Hexter?"

"This is the man, sir. What I mean by saying you know about the case is that you have agreed with me that an innocent man was railroaded into prison, after I gave you the facts. He is out through a trick worked by a prison guard. He'll give us the details later. Just now it's more important for you to be told that Tasper Britt, by his own acts, has confessed that he robbed the Egypt Trust Company."

"Well, I'll be damnationed!" blurted the big man, with such whole-souled astonishment that the mode of expression was pardonable. "And I thought that plenty and enough was happening in this town for one night!"

"Frank, this is Colonel Norman Wincott. He has well understood your case from what I have told him. Now he will understand better. Colonel, won't you allow Frank's story to wait? He is in a dreadfully nervous state, poor chap. And I'm afraid he'll go crazy on our hands if he isn't enlightened right away about what is going on here to-night."

Colonel Wincott strode across the room and slapped Vaniman cordially on the shoulder with one hand and pumphandled with the other. "Plenty of men have escaped from state prison. There's a special novelty about a story of that sort. But let me tell you that I'm the only man in the world who has ever put over a proposition such as this one that is on the docket right here and now. I don't blame you for being interested." It was plain that the colonel entertained no mean opinion of himself and his projects. "All is, Vaniman, I hope your making a two-ring affair of it hasn't taken the attention of the folks off the main show."

"It has only added to the general effect," affirmed the Squire. "It's a clincher. Folks don't care now because Tasper Britt is awake. He has got plenty of business of his own to attend to without calling in sheriffs to slap on attachments."

"Very good! The easier the better," returned Colonel Wincott. "But when I hired you to look after the law part, Hexter, I reckoned you could counter every crack he made. Sit down, Vaniman!" He picked up the chair he had overturned and took it for himself. "You have seen the parade, some of it?"

"I saw a great deal of it, sir."

"And you don't know where it's headed for?"

"No."

The colonel leaned back and regarded the Squire with the satisfied contentment of a cat who had tucked away the last morsel of the canary. Then he winked at Vaniman. "Young man, did you ever hear of Wincott's Pure Rye?"

"No, sir."

"Glad of it! Hope you never were familiar with any other brands. However, enough men did know about it in those dear, damp days beyond recall to make me independent of the pawnshop, to say the least. And, having cleaned up a good pot with whisky running down men's gullets, I reckoned I'd see what I could do with water running downhill. Do you get me at all so far?"

"No, sir."

"Didn't suppose you would. I'm only shuffling the deck. Now for the deal! Awhile ago I came up into this state from the South and I bought the unorganized township that bounds this town on the north. It had gone begging for a buyer because it's mostly pond and water power. But it's what I wanted. And, having bought it, I used my check book and got some good lobbyists on the job and I got a conditional charter from the legislature. That is to say, it becomes a town charter automatically the moment I can report a certain number of inhabitants—not mere men, but families, regularly settled. Do you see?"