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Updated: June 22, 2025
He thrust out a hand and pumped his friend's limp arm, and Aldous felt himself growing suddenly warm under the other's chuckling gaze. "For goodness sake don't say anything, or act anything, old man," he pleaded. "I'm just hoping." Blackton nodded with prodigious understanding in his eyes. "Come along when you get through with MacDonald," he said.
Blackton that we may not return by four o'clock?" "I will not. And" Blackton puffed hard at his pipe "and, John the Tête Jaune preacher is our nearest neighbour," he finished. From then until dinner time John Aldous lived in an atmosphere that was not quite real, but a little like a dream. His hopes and his happiness were at their highest.
"Joanne and I are going for a walk this afternoon, Blackton," said Aldous, "and I just want to tell you not to worry if we're not back by four o'clock. Don't wait for us. We may be watching the blow-up from the top of some mountain." Blackton chuckled. "Don't blame you," he said.
The sun was just falling behind the western mountains when Peggy and Joanne, hurried most incontinently by Blackton, who had looked at his watch, left the table to prepare themselves for the big event of the evening. "I want to get you there before dusk," he explained. "So please hurry!" They were back in five minutes.
Requesting Gregg to hunt him up and send him to the bungalow, he climbed into the back seat, with Joanne between him and Peggy. Her little hand lay in his. Her fingers clung to him. But her hair hid her face, and on the other side of her Peggy Blackton was laughing and talking and crying by turns.
"Why in heaven's name do you light a match then, with us standing over all those tons of dynamite?" demanded Peggy. "Paul Blackton, you're " The engineer's laughter was like a giant's roar in the cavern, and Joanne gave a gasp, while Peggy shiveringly caught Aldous by the arm. "There I've got the lantern!" exclaimed Blackton. "There isn't any danger, not a bit.
Here it is." From his pocket he produced the note and gave it to Aldous. "I'll read it a little later," said Aldous. "The ladies may possibly become anxious about us." He dropped it in his pocket as he thanked Blackton for the trouble he had taken in finding MacDonald. As he climbed into the front seat of the buckboard his eyes met Joanne's.
It was not his face that she had expected to see nor because of him that she had lifted her veil for the mob! He stepped down from the car and gave her his hand. Her fingers clutched his convulsively. And they were cold as the fingers of the dead. A moment later some one came surging through the crowd, and called Aldous by name. It was Blackton.
Behind this, white and still in the moonlight, but with eyes wide open and filled with horror, lay Joanne. Hands and feet were bound, and a big handkerchief was tied over her mouth. Twenty seconds later Aldous held her shivering and sobbing and laughing hysterically by turns in his arms, while MacDonald's voice brought Paul and Peggy Blackton to them.
"One can shave as well as another can make curls," she reminded him, and there came an adorable little dimple at the corner of her mouth as she looked toward Paul Blackton. Aldous was glad that Paul and Peggy Blackton did most of the talking that morning.
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