wanted to give Hutton time to
get back to his lair and feel easy about pursuit after his abortive
raid. "I expect we'll worry along," I said idly. "Gimme that clean rag
for your arm!"

But Macartney cast down the handkerchief in his hand. "This fool thing's
too short! Open that box, will you? There's a roll of bandage just
inside."

There was. But there was something else just inside, too. I stared at a
worn leather case, that pretended to be a prayer-book with a brass clasp
and tarnished gilt edges, a case I had seen too often to make any
mistake about. "By gad," I cried blankly. "Why, you've got old
Thompson's cards!"

Macartney was poking at his wounded arm, and he winced. "Hurry up, will
you? I can't stop this silly blood. Of course I have Thompson's cards;
I can't help it if you think I'm an ass. I liked the old man, and I
didn't fancy the Billy Joneses playing cribbage with the only thing in
the world he cared for. I took the cards the day we buried him--saw them
lying in the kitchen."

"I expect you needn't have worried about Billy," I commented absently.
"He was going to give those cards to me, only he and I couldn't find
them."

"Do come on," snapped Macartney. He was set-eyed as usual, but I guessed
he was ashamed to have had me find him out in a sentimental weakness.
"I'd have told you I had them if I'd known you cared. You can take the
things now, if you want them."

It was not till that minute that I remembered Macartney could not know
why I wanted them, nor anything about the sort of codicil I'd torn off
the envelope of Thompson's letter to Dudley: for there had been nothing
about cards in what he'd read in it, or in the letter itself. But as the
remembrance of both things shot up in me, I didn't confide them to
Macartney, any more than I had to Dudley himself. I had a queer sort of
idea that if Thompson's pencilled scrawl had meant anything more than
the wanderings of a distressed mind, I'd better get hold of it myself
first. I said: "All right," and pocketed Thompson's cards. Then I did
up Macartney's arm, and the two of us went up the road to Dudley. He and
his dry nurse, Baker, who'd promptly arrived from the bunk house,
stumped straight back to the assay office with Macartney to fuss over
the men who'd been killed. I was making for my own room, to see if
Thompson's resurrected cards would shed any light on his crazy scrawls,
when I heard a poker drop in the living room. Somebody was in there,