"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 coarse 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 bump 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 think