"_It's happening now!_"

Krech hissed the words in a fierce whisper. His eyes had automatically followed the detective's glowing cigarette and had been attracted by something farther off, barely visible through the deepening dusk.

Almost before Miss Ocky and Creighton could sense the meaning of his words, he had sprung to his feet and vaulted the veranda railing.

Thanks to a downhill slope of the ground at this point the piazza floor was a full nine feet from the gra.s.s lawn, and they heard a hearty grunt as Krech alighted. Then he recovered his footing and sped with extraordinary swiftness for so large a man across the sward in the direction of that woods that edged it.

"What is it?" gasped Miss Ocky. "Oh--what is it?"

"The monk!" cried Creighton. "The monk!"

His glance, darting ahead of the speeding Krech, had discerned an unmistakable figure outlined against a clump of white birch as though the monk had deliberately chosen a background against which he would be most conspicuous to the group on the piazza. He was standing there motionless, apparently indifferent to the rushing menace of Krech, and through the detective's brain, searing it like a flame, shot the memory of something Sherwood had said, "I thought the fellow would run, but instead of that he waited!" He was waiting now!

"Krech!" cried the detective. "_Careful--careful!_"

His hands were on the rail of the veranda. It had not taken two seconds for him to size the situation and shout his warning, and those same seconds were occupied in getting out of his chair and dashing to the rail. He had one leg over this when two hands like steel clamps circled his right arm and gripped him fiercely.

"Please--oh, _please_!" stammered a frightened voice.

"_Ocky!_" he gasped in furious protest. "_Leggo!_"

He wrenched himself free and went sprawling over the rail, a wordless prayer in his heart that no broken legs or sprained ankles were to be his portion. He landed unhurt in a providential flowerbed, and struggled again to his feet to discover that both the monk and Krech had vanished.

There was a little-used trail which commenced near the birch-trees and ran sharply downhill to the small house that Miss Ocky had donated to her nephew and his bride. Creighton knew of its existence, and never doubted now that the monk had disappeared into it at the last moment with the impetuous Krech in full pursuit. He drew an electric torch from his hip-pocket as he raced for the dark entrance to the path, anxiety for his friend the paramount force that speeded his flying feet.

"Why did he try to jump him like that?" he thought. "If he had only used his head a bit! He could have sauntered into the house, out the back door, crept through the woods and taken the fellow in the rear.

He has all the courage of a mad bull--and about as much sense."

This unkind summary of Krech's character was no sooner complete than Creighton himself was in the trail, plunging headlong down its sharp declivity with quite as much recklessness as his friend had shown, save the advantage of his flash. He played its powerful beam ahead of him as he ran and leaped, until twenty yards from the entrance he suddenly dug his heels hard into the rubble of the path to halt his wild career as the light showed him the body of a man lying face downward in the trail. Its bulk alone left no doubt of ident.i.ty.

"_h.e.l.l!_" snapped the detective, and the one vicious word was the epitome of all that he felt.

With desperate haste he jammed the torch into a crotch of a small tree so that its rays illuminated the scene, then dropped to his knees beside the p.r.o.ne body of his friend, exerted all his strength and rolled it over on its back. His eager fingers, pressing, prodding, explored the still form throughout its length.

"No wounds--no broken bones," was his first relieved diagnosis. Then "h.e.l.lo--here we are!" An angry red abrasion on the big man's forehead had caught his attention. He touched it, and smiled as it elicited a groan from the victim that sounded to Creighton like celestial music.

"A crack on the head--knocked him out!" he muttered, then raised his voice. "I say, Krech--come to, old man, come to!"

The adjuration seemed to penetrate Mr. Krech's dazed faculties. His eyes opened, blinked once or twice, opened again and stared tranquilly up into Creighton's. His lips moved and words issued.

"A fall like that," he observed calmly, "would have killed an ordinary man."

"Thank heaven!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the detective fervently. "Are you much hurt? What happened?"

"Tripped--came down with a dirty wallop and cracked my head on something awfully hard." He raised himself cautiously to a sitting position and glanced about him. "That chunk of granite there--doesn't it look to you as if it were freshly broken?"

"I guess it was only this big root!" said Creighton, and laughed aloud in his relief. Then his mirth abruptly gave way to surprise. "h.e.l.lo,"

he said. "h.e.l.lo--h.e.l.lo--h.e.l.lo!"

He had been looking around too, and now he picked up a loose end of stout wire that was attached at one extremity to a sapling. There could be no question as to what it was doing there. Until Krech's shin had snapped it, it had been stretched taut across the trail a foot above the ground.

"Gee Joseph!" exclaimed the big man, staring at the simple apparatus of destruction. "Clever little h.e.l.lion, ain't he?" He stood up, moved his arms and legs tentatively and gave himself a shake.

"All right?" asked Creighton quickly.

"Never felt better in my life. Little shaking-up like that--good for a man. Who was the ancient johnnie that used to bounce up from the earth a bit stronger for every time he hit it?"

"Antaeus," suggested the detective absently.

"Uh-huh. H. Antaeus Krech--that's me." He added with more appropriate seriousness, "What became of our little playmate?"

"Search me," replied Creighton, still thoughtful. "I'm trying to figure out what was back of all this. It was a prearranged trap, of course. He showed himself deliberately, invited us to chase him, then arranged this wire to insure his get-away. But--why?"

"I can give you a good guess, Peter, my boy," said Krech slowly. "I think I have inadvertently saved your life."

"Huh? What's that?"

"Suppose you are getting too close to the truth of who killed Simon Varr--or suppose the murderer thinks you are, which comes to the same thing. He doesn't care for the idea--not a-tall. So he has a happy inspiration and plots this scenario as you have described it--only to draw an anticlimax. You were supposed to do the chasing. Naturally he couldn't foresee that your guardian angel, the unfortunate me, would come galloping down here and spring his trap.

"What if it had been you who was slumbering peacefully in the middle of the path instead of me? Would you ever have awakened again? Or would you now be sitting somewhere on a cloud talking it all over with Simon?

How's that for a theory?"

"You think he'd have stuck a knife in me? I must admit there is a nasty air of plausibility about your sketch." The detective mused a moment. "There's one consolation if it's true; it's mighty complimentary--almost flattering--to my ability!"

He stood up and rescued his torch from its resting-place in the tree.

As he took it down, its beam was deflected briefly along the trail, and in that instant he uttered a quick exclamation.

"Look there!" he snapped. "What's that?"

_XXI: Twilight_

Krech came to attention at the detective's exclamation and his eyes followed the ray of light from the torch as Creighton directed it to a point on the ground scarcely two yards from their feet. An oblong, flat package wrapped in brown paper lay in the trail. They dove for it together and Creighton secured it, properly enough, since the flash-light revealed his name on the face of it, scrawled in the same uncouth writing that they had seen before on the anonymous communication of the monk to Simon Varr.

"What's in it?" demanded Krech, and added a trifle anxiously, "It doesn't tick, does it?"

"That cropper you came evidently hasn't hurt your imagination,"

chuckled the detective as he loosened the coa.r.s.e string about the package. "No, it isn't a bomb. It's--well, by golly, will you look at what it is!"

Very gingerly, holding it in the tips of his fingers, he lifted a red leather notebook from its nest of brown wrappings and showed it to Krech. The big man nearly dropped the torch which he had taken from his friend.

"Varr's notebook!" he cried. "It must be!"

"It is," confirmed Creighton, who had lifted one cover with the tip of a finger nail and glanced at the contents of a page. "Now, isn't this lovely! Who says we can't recover loot? The thief may have to hand it to us on a tray, but it's only results that count! Say, Krech--there goes your melodramatic theory of a plot to b.u.mp me off."

"I suppose so."

"He lured me down this trail so I'd find it, and to make sure I didn't miss it, he strung that wire where it would throw me with my face almost on the darn thing! You'd have seen it if you hadn't been knocked silly, and I'd have seen it if I'd been thinking of anything but you."

"He went to a lot of trouble that he could have spared himself for all of me!" grunted Krech, feeling his forehead. "I must look like the happy end of a barroom brawl. Why didn't he mail it?"