"What are you doing on my property at this hour?"

"Digging."

"Ah!" It was hardly an exclamation; rather it was a contained commentary. Mr. Blair had noted the exhumed casket. "You might better have taken my offer," he continued after a pause of some seconds. "I think, sir, you have dug the grave of your own career."

"That remains to be seen."

"Schlager! Are you there?"

"Yes, Mr. Blair. They've broken my wrist and got my gun."

Mr. Blair took that under consideration. "It doesn't strike me that you are much of a man-hunter," he observed judicially. "Who are _they_?"

"Francis Sedgwick is the other, at your service," answered the owner of that name.

An extraordinary convulsion of rage distorted the set features of the elderly man.

"You!" he cried. "Haven't you done enough-without this! I would come on now if h.e.l.l yawned for me."

Stricken with amazement at the hatred in the tone, Sedgwick stood staring. But Kent stepped before the advancing man. "This won't do," he said firmly. "We can't any of us afford killing."

"I can," contradicted Mr. Blair.

"You would gain nothing by it. If one of us is killed the other will finish the task. You know what I am here for, Mr. Blair. I purpose to open that coffin and then go."

"No," said the master of Hedgerow House; and it was twenty years since his "no" had been overborne.

"Yes," returned Chester Kent quietly.

Mr. Blair's arm rose, steady and slow, with the inevitable motion of machinery.

"If you shoot," pointed out Kent, "you will rouse the house. Is there no one there from whom you wish to conceal that coffin?"

The arm rose higher until the muzzle of the pistol glared, like a baleful l.u.s.terless eye, into Kent's face. Instead of making any counter-motion with the sheriff's revolver, the scientist turned on his heel, walked to Sedgwick, and handed him the weapon. "I'm going to open the coffin, Frank," he announced. "That pistol of Mr. Blair's is a target arm. It has only one shot."

"True," put in its owner, "but I can score one hundred and twenty with it at a hundred yards' range."

"If he should fire, Frank, wing him. And then, whatever happens, get that casket open. That is the one thing you _must_ do-for me and yourself."

"But he may kill you," cried Sedgwick in an agony of apprehension.

"He may; but I think he won't."

"Won't he!" muttered the older man on an indrawn breath. "I'd rather it was the other scoundrel. But either-or both."

Sedgwick stepped to within two paces of him. "Blair," he said with a snarl, "you so much as _think_ with that trigger finger, and you're dead!"

"No, no killing, Frank," countermanded Kent. "In his place, you'd perhaps do as he is doing."

"Don't take any chances, Mr. Blair," besought the sheriff. "They're desperate characters. Look what they done to me!"

"There's a testimonial," murmured Kent, as he picked up his spade, "for one who has always worked on the side of law and order."

He worked the blade craftily under the lid and began to pry. The cover gave slightly. Mr. Blair's pistol sank to his side. "I should have shot before warning you," he said bitterly. "Violating graves is, I suppose, your idea of a lawful and orderly proceeding."

The rending crackle of the hard heavy wood was his answer. Kent stooped, and struggled up bearing a shapeless heavy object in his arms. The object seemed to be swathed in sacking. Kent let it fall to the ground, where it lopped and lay. "All right," said he, with a strong exhalation of relief. "I knew it must be. And yet-well, one never is absolute in certainty. And if I'd been wrong, I think, Frank, we could profitably have used that gun on ourselves. You can drop it, now. Come over here."

Courageous though Sedgwick was, his nerves were of a highly sensitive order. He shuddered back. "I don't believe I can do it, Chet."

"You must. As a witness. Come! Brace up!"

Setting the bull's-eye lantern down, Kent produced a pocket-knife.

Sedgwick drew a long breath, and walking over, crouched, steeling his nerves against the revelation that should come when the cords should be cut and the swathings reveal their contents. "If I keel over, don't let me tumble into the grave," he said simply, and choked the last word off from becoming a cry of horror as he beheld his friend drive the knife-blade to the hilt in the body, and then whip it across and downward with a long ripping draw under which the harsh cloth sang hideously.

"Open your eyes! Look! Look!" cried Kent heartily.

A strong trickle of sand flowed out of the rent in the sack and spread upon the ground.

"That is all," said Kent.

Relief clamored within Sedgwick for expression. He began to laugh in short choking spasms.

"Quiet!" warned Mr. Blair, in a broken tone of appeal. "You've found out the secret. G.o.d knows what you'll do with it. But there are innocent people in the house. I see a light stirring there now. We-I must do what I may to shelter them."

A glimmer shone from the ground floor of one of the wings. Thither Mr.

Blair ran, calling out as he went. When he returned, his face was like a mask.

"Now," said he, "what is this matter? Blackmail?"

Kent's face withdrew, as it were, behind his inscrutable half smile.

"Peace, if you will," said he. "A truce, at least."

"I should like to know just how much you know."

"An offer. I will tell you whenever you are ready to tell me all that you know. I think we are mutually in need of each other."

"I wish you were at the bottom of that pit," retorted the other grimly.

"You and your scoundrel of a friend with you."

"Thank you for myself," said Sedgwick. "If you were twenty years younger I would break every bone in your body for that."

"Steady, Frank," put in Kent. "Judge no man by his speech who has been through what Alexander Blair has been through to-night. Mr. Blair," he added, "you've refused my offer. It is still open. And as an extra, I will undertake, for Mr. Sedgwick and myself, that this night's affair shall be kept secret. And now, the next thing is to cover the evidence.

Spades, Frank."

The two men took up their tools.

"I'll spell you," said Alexander Blair.