The landlord met us with an air half-anxious, half-angry.
"I"d like to know who"s to pay for this!" he cried. "There"s a sash and four panes of gla.s.s gone to smithereens."
"The gentleman who just went out will be glad to pay for it, if you"ll call it to his attention," I said blandly.
"I"ll have the law on him!" shouted the landlord, getting red in the face. "And if he"s a friend of yours you"d better settle for him, or it will be the worse for him."
"I"m afraid he isn"t a friend of mine," I said dubiously. "He didn"t appear to take that view of it."
"That"s so," admitted the landlord. "But I don"t know his name, and somebody"s got to settle for that gla.s.s."
I obliged the landlord with Mr. Meeker"s name, and with the bestowal of this poor satisfaction returned to the interrupted meal.
"Well, I reckon he wouldn"t have been very pleasant company if you"d got him," said one of the men consolingly, when we had told our tale of the search for a guest.
"I suspect he would be less disagreeable in here than out with his gang," I returned dryly, and turned the subject. I did not care to discuss my plan to get a hostage now that it had failed.
The gray day plashed slowly toward nightfall. The rain fell by fits and starts, now with a sudden dash, now gently as though it were only of half a mind to fall at all. But the wind blew strong, and the clouds that drove up from the far south were dark enough to have borne threats of a coming deluge.
As the time wore on I suspected that my men grew uneasy, wondering what we were there for, and why I did not make some move. Then I reflected that this could not be. It was I who was wondering. The men were accustomed to let me do their thinking for them, and could be troubled no more here than in San Francisco. But what was I expected to do? Where could my orders be? Had they gone astray? Had the plans of the Unknown come to disaster through the difficulty of getting the telegraph on Sunday? The office here was closed. The Unknown, being a woman, I ungallantly reflected, would have neglected to take so small a circ.u.mstance into consideration, and she might even now be besieging the telegraph office in San Francisco in a vain effort to get word to Livermore.
On this thought I bestirred myself, and after much trouble had speech with the young man who combined in his person the offices of telegraph operator, station master, ticket seller, freight agent and baggage handler for the place. He objected to opening the office "out of office hours."
"There might be inducements discovered that would make it worth your while, I suppose?" I said, jingling some silver carelessly in my pocket.
He smiled.
"Well, I don"t care if I do," he replied. "Whatever you think is fair, of course."
It was more than I thought fair, but the agent thawed into friendship at once, and expressed his readiness to "call San Francisco" till he got an answer if it took till dark.
I might have saved my trouble and my coin. San Francisco replied with some emphasis that there was nothing for me, and never had been, and who was I, anyhow?
There was nothing to be done. I must possess my soul in patience in the belief that the Unknown knew what she was about and that I should get my orders in due time--probably after nightfall, when darkness would cover any necessary movement.
But if I could shift the worry and responsibility of the present situation on the Unknown, there was another trouble that loomed larger and more perplexing before my mind with each pa.s.sing hour. If the mission of to-day were prolonged into the morrow, what was to become of the Omega deal, and where would Doddridge Knapp"s plans of fortune be found? I smiled to think that I should concern myself with this question when I knew that Doddridge Knapp"s men were waiting and watching for my first movement with orders that probably did not stop at murder itself.
Yet my trouble of mind increased with the pa.s.sing time as I vainly endeavored to devise some plan to meet the difficulty that had been made for me.
But as I saw no way to straighten out this tangle, I turned my attention to the boy in the hope of getting from him some information that might throw light on the situation.
"He"s as shy as a young quail," said Wainwright, when my advances were received in stubborn silence.
"You seem to be getting along pretty well with him," I suggested.
"Yes, sir; he"ll talk a bit with me, but he"s as close-mouthed a chap as you"ll find in the state, sir, unless it"s one of them deef and dummies."
I made another unsuccessful attempt to cultivate the acquaintance of my charge.
"You"ve got a day"s job before you if you get him to open his head," said Wainwright, amused at the failure of my efforts as an infant-charmer.
"What has he been talking about?" I inquired, somewhat disgusted.
"The train," chuckled Wainwright. "Blamed if I think he"s seen anything else since he started."
"The train?"
"Yes; the one we come on. He"s been talking about it, and wondering what I"d do with it and without it till I reckon we"ve covered pretty near everything that could happen to a fellow with a train or without one."
"Is that the only subject of interest?"
"Well, he did go so far as to say that the milk was different here, and that he wanted a kind of cake we didn"t get at dinner."
I attacked the young man on his weak point, and got some brief answers in reply to my remarks on the attractiveness of locomotives and the virtues of cars. But as any venture away from the important subject was met with the silence of the clam, I had at last to give up with a wild desire to shake the young man until some more satisfactory idea should come uppermost.
As darkness came on, the apprehensions of danger which had made no impression on me by daylight, began to settle strongly on my spirits.
The wind that dashed the rain-drops in gusts on the panes seemed to whistle a warning, and the splash of the water outside was as the muttering of a tale of melancholy in an unknown tongue.
I concealed my fears and depressions from the men, and with the lighting of the lamps made my dispositions to meet any attack that might come. I had satisfied myself that the rear bedroom, that faced the south, could not be entered from the outside without the aid of ladders. The parlor showed a sheer drop to the street on the west, and I felt a.s.sured we were safe on that side. But the front windows of the parlor, and the front bedroom which joined it, opened on the veranda roof in common with a dozen other rooms. Inside, the hallway, perhaps eight feet wide and twenty-five feet long, offered the only approach to our rooms from the stairs. The situation was not good for defense, and at the thought I had a mind even then to seek other quarters.
It was too late for such a move, however, and I decided to make the best of the position. I placed the boy in the south bedroom, which could be reached only through the parlor. With him I placed Wainwright and Fitzhugh, the two strongest men of the party. The north bedroom, opening on the hallway, the veranda roof and the parlor, looked to be the weakest part of my position, but I thought it might be used to advantage as a post of observation. The windows were guarded with shutters of no great strength. We closed and secured those of the parlor and the inner bedroom as well as possible. Those of the north bedroom I left open. By leaving the room dark it would be easy for a sentinel to get warning of an a.s.sault by way of the veranda roof. I stationed Porter in the hall, and Abrams in the dark bedroom, while Lockhart, Wilson, Brown and I held the parlor and made ourselves comfortable until the time should come to relieve the men on guard.
One by one the lights that could be seen here and there through the town disappeared, the sounds from the streets and the other parts of the house came more infrequently and at last were smothered in silence, and only darkness and the storm remained.
I thrust open the door to the bedroom to see that the boy and his guards were safe, and this done I turned down the light, threw myself on the floor before the door that protected my charge, and mused over the strange events that had crowded so swiftly upon me.
Subtle warnings of danger floated over my senses between sleeping and waking, and each time I dropped into a doze I awoke with a start, to see only the dimly-lighted forms of my men before me, and to hear only the sweep and whistle of the wind outside and the dash of water against the shutters. Thrice I had been aroused thus, when, on the borderland between dreams and waking, a voice reached my ear.
"S-s-t! What was that?"
I sprang up, wide-awake, revolver in hand. It was Lockhart who spoke. We all strained our ears to listen. There was nothing to be heard but the moan of the wind and the dash of water.
"What was it?" I whispered.
"I don"t know."
"I heard nothing."
"It was a coo-hoo--like the call of an owl, but--"
"But you thought it was a man?" Lockhart nodded. Brown and Wilson had not heard it.
"Was it inside or outside?"
"It was out here, I thought," said Lockhart doubtfully, pointing to the street that ran by the side of the hotel.
I opened the door to the dark bedroom in which Abrams kept watch. It swung noiselessly to my cautious touch. For a moment I could see nothing of my henchman, but the window was open. Then, in the obscurity, I thought I discovered his body lying half-way across the window-sill. I waited for him to finish his observations on the weather, but as he made no move I was struck with the fear that he had met foul play and touched him lightly.
In a flash he had turned on me, and I felt the muzzle of a revolver pressing against my side.