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"Do you remember when I warned you and Dextry that they were coming to search your cabin for the gold? Well, that girl put them on to you. I found it out afterwards. She keeps the keys to McNamara's safety vault where your dust lies, and she's the one who handles the Judge. It isn't McNamara at all." The woman lied easily, fluently, and the man believed her.
"Well, it does seem small for Alec McNamara, but I can't see what else you're up to." "Within a week I'll be running every good mine in the Nome district." McNamara's voice was calm but decisive, his glance keen and alert, while about him clung such a breath of power and confidence that it compelled belief even in the face of this astounding speech.
"Yes, and at daylight I'll take your place in McNamara's loft," said Glenister. "There will be doings to-morrow when they don't find him." They returned by the way they had come to the lawyer's room, extinguished his light, went to their own cabin and to bed. At dawn Glenister arose and sought his place above McNamara's office.
The voice of a man in authority shouted loud commands. No demonstration came from the outer voids, nothing but the wicked streaks that stabbed the darkness. Then suddenly, behind McNamara's men, the night glared luridly as though a great furnace-door had opened and then clanged shut, while with it came a hoarse thudding roar that silenced the rifle play.
Simultaneously with his jump he detected a movement in the shadows that banked the wall at his elbow and saw the flaming spurt of a revolver-shot. The man had crouched behind the building and was so close that it seemed impossible to miss. Glenister fell heavily upon his side and the thought flashed over him, "McNamara's thugs have shot me."
By now McNamara's arm was bent and cramped upon his back, and then they saw Glenister's shoulder dip, his elbow come closer to his side, and his body heave in one final terrific effort as though pushing a heavy weight. In the silence something snapped like a stick. There came a deafening report and the scream of a strong man overcome with agony.
McNamara's distress was patent to his antagonist, who advanced upon him with the hunger of promised victory; but the young man's muscles obeyed his commands sluggishly, his ribs seemed broken, his back was weak, and on the inner side of his legs the flesh was quivering.
During the last month his weak face had shrunk and altered until vacillation was betrayed in every line, and he had acquired the habit of furtively watching McNamara's slightest movement. It seemed that the part he played sat heavily upon him. The Judge examined the papers perfunctorily, and, although his air was deliberate, his fingers made clumsy work of it.
"He won't," said Voorhees, with conviction, and the listener overhead smiled grimly to himself, for at that moment, twenty miles offshore, lay Mac's little tug, hove to in the track of the outgoing steamship, and in her tiny cabin sat Bill Wheaton eating breakfast. As the morning wore by with no news of the lawyer, McNamara's uneasiness grew.
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