e
woods.

"The exact spot," he whispered. "Take cover, and follow your memorized
orders!"

He settled down noiselessly into the brakes. The others did likewise.
Utter silence fell, save for the far, vague roar of the city. A
vagrant little breeze was stirring the new foliage, through which a
few stars curiously peeped. The four men seemed far, very far from any
others. And yet--

_Were_ there any others near them? the major wondered. No sign, no
sound of them existed. Off to northward, where the dim glow ghosted up
against the sky, an occasional noise drifted to the night. A distant
laugh diffused itself through the dark. A dog yapped; perhaps the
same that they had heard barking, a few minutes before. Then came the
faint, sharp tapping of a hammer smiting metal.

"They're knocking out the holding-pins," thought the major. "In a few
minutes it'll be too late, _if_ we don't strike now!" He felt a great
temptation to urge haste, on the Master. But, aware of the futility of
any suggestion, the risk of being demoted for any other _faux pas_, he
bridled his impatience and held still.

Realizing that they were now lying at the exact distance of 440 yards
from the stockade that protected the thing they had come to steal--if
you can call "stealing" the forced sale the Master now planned
consummating, by having his bankers put into unwilling hands every
ultimate penny of the more than $3,500,000 involved, once the _coup_
should be put through--realizing this fact, Bohannan felt the tug of a
profound excitement.

His pulses quickened; the tension of his Celtic nerves keyed itself up
like a banjo-string about to snap. Steeled in the grim usages of
war though he was, and more than once having felt the heart-breaking
stress of the zero hour, this final moment of waiting, of suspense
before the attack that was so profoundly to affect his life and the
lives of all these other hardy men, pulled heavily at his nerves. He
desperately wanted a smoke, again, but that was out of the question.
It seemed to him, there in the dark and stillness, one of the fateful
moments of time, pregnant with possibilities unlimited.

The Master, Alden, Rrisa, mere vague blurs among the ferns, remained
motionless. If their nerves were a-tingle, they gave no hint or sign
of it. Where might the others of the Legion be? No indication of
them could be made out. No other living thing seemed in the woods
encircling the stockade. Was each man really there