he might?"

"No. I can't say I have."

"All right. I'll take a chance. But I want it understood that I'm not
responsible if anything goes wrong."

"That's understood."

Peter made his way downstairs, and out of the front door to the portico.
Stryker, curiously enough, was nowhere to be seen. Peter went out across
the dim lawn into the starlight. Jesse Brown challenged him by the big
tree and Peter stopped for a moment to talk with him, explaining that he
would be returning to the house later.

"The old man seems to be comin' to life, Mister," said Jesse.

"What do you mean?"

"Not so skeered-like. He was out here when you went to the Cabin for
them plans----"

"Out here?" said Peter in amazement.

Andy nodded. "He seemed more natural-like,--asked what the countersign
was and said mebbe we'd all be goin' back to the mills after a night or
so."

"Oh, did he? That's good. You're pretty tired of this night work?"

"Not so long as it pays good. But what did he mean by changin' the
guards?"

"He didn't say anything to me about it," said Peter, concealing his
surprise.

"Oh, didn't he? Well, he took Andy off the privet hedge and sent him
down to the clump of pines near the road."

"I see," said Peter. "Why?"

"You've got me, Mister. If there's trouble to-night, there ain't no one
at the back of the house at all. We're one man short."

"Who?"

"Shad Wells. He ain't showed up."

"Ah, I see," muttered Peter. And then, as he lighted a cigarette, "Oh,
well, we'll get along somehow. But look sharp, just the same."

Peter went down the lawn thoughtfully. From the first he hadn't been any
too pleased with this mission. Though Peter was aware that in the realm
of big business it masqueraded under other names, blackmail, at the
best, was a dirty thing. At the worst--and McGuire's affair with the
insistent Hawk seemed to fall into this classification,--it was both
sinister and contemptible. To be concerned in these dark doings even as
an emissary was hardly in accordance with Peter's notion of his job, and
he had acceded to McGuire's request without thinking of possible
consequences, more out of pity for his employer in his plight than for
any other reason. But he remembered that it usually required a guilty
conscience to make blackmail possible and that the man who paid always
paid because of something discreditable which he wished to conceal.

McGuire's explanations had been thin and Peter knew that the real