near the actual truth
when the telephone in the front room jangled noisily.

"Want me to answer it?" Wallace was already on his feet.

"Thanks," Garton told him. "But I've got it fixed so that I can handle
it from here."

He picked up the telephone which was attached to the office instrument
and which he kept on the floor at his bedside. And as he caught the
first word he pressed the receiver close to his ear so that no sound
from it might escape and reach his alert visitor.

It was the Lark's voice, tense, earnest, trembling with the import of
the Lark's message.

"That you, Con? Garton? Conniston there? No? Tell him for me to keep
under cover. Lonesome Pete has jest rode into camp, an' he's seen that
canary of his, an' she's been blowin' off to him. Hapgood's thicker'n
thieves with Swinnerton. He's put him up to this. Swinnerton has sent
the sheriff after Con. He's to jug him for killin' that Chink! Get me?
Jest to hold him in the can so's he can't work until after October
first. Get me, 'bo? You'll put Con wise? Wallace ought to be there any
minute--"

Garton answered as quietly as he could:

"All right. I'll attend to everything. Good-by." And then, setting the
telephone back upon the floor, he took a fresh cigarette from his
case, lighted it over the lamp, his face showing calm and unconcerned,
and, leaning back, began to think swiftly.

Conniston was now with the Crawfords. Presently he would leave them
and return to the office to spend the night with Garton. Bill Wallace
evidently knew this, and was content to wait quietly until his man
came. Lonesome Pete had done his part, had ridden with all possible
speed to Deep Creek, where he had supposed Conniston was. The Lark had
done his part. The rest was up to Tommy Garton. For he knew that with
Conniston left to continue his work the work would be done. He knew
that Conniston had every detail now at his fingers' ends. He knew that
if Swinnerton could succeed in this coup he might be able to put some
further unexpected, some fatal obstacle in the way of the Great Work.
And that then, with Conniston out of it, it again would be "anybody's
game."

Wallace was talking again about unimportant nothings, Garton was
answering him in monosyllables and striving to see the way, to find
out the thing which he must do. It was plain that Conniston must be
prevented from coming to the office to-night. And when he saw the way
before him he asked, carelessly:

"You'll