The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge by Robert J. Pearsall

trap-like cañon at the rear of the house, with its wide mouth and narrow exit upon the sea. But we had no sooner arrived at the railing that guarded that exit, where we could look down some hundred feet into white surf, than Miss Maxon was seized with a violent fit of trembling and suggested that we return. It was the only sign of real agitation I saw in her that day.
    That was late in the afternoon and the last time we left the house.
    Breakfast and lunch had been largely makeshifts, but dinner that evening was a triumph, Osborne having supplied the house for my residence fairly well and Miss Maxon proving herself a miraculous cook. After we’d eaten, I took his share of the meal in to Hardridge, whom I found in a state of eager expectancy. He evidently remembered my promise that he’d be unbound at nightfall, and I didn’t disappoint him. Instead of standing over him with drawn revolver while he ate, as I’d done before, I simply released his hands and left him fumbling wildly but with stiff and awkward fingers at his gag. I wanted to get away from him before he could ask me in words the eager question that had been staring out of his overbright eyes all day.
    “Now, don’t be a fool,” I told him through the closing door. “You can’t get out, and you don’t want to get out, and you don’t want to make a noise. Be quiet, and you’ll be —— glad of it later.”
    And I bolted the door without locking it and then pressed a button that projected from the wall near the door jamb. I heard a pleased exclamation from Hardridge as the electric light came on within his cell. Thereafter he was silent, but, whether because of my advice or because Miss Maxon and I remained so close to the closet that he could hear our occasional movements, I do not know.
    For by then it was quite dark, and, after another little preparation for what was to come, I joined Miss Maxon in the dining-room. The partition between this room and the reception-room split the inner wall of the closet, and the house was so quiet that we could sometimes hear Hardridge breathe. We had turned on no lights save that within the closet; so from without the place no doubt appeared absolutely deserted.
    Everything was silent and dark. In the two hours that we sat there, I found time to go over several times every incident connected with my peculiar visit to Cragcastle. My interest—desultory at first but rapidly quickening—in the Chronicle want ad.; my carefully worded letter in answer and Osborne’s skillfully alluring and yet noncommittal reply; our meeting—I suppose I was one of some hundreds of applicants, most of whom were disposed of by the office boy; Osborne’s quick inspection, his clever cross-examination, his devious approach to the subject of the missing heir. Our agreement, and my arrival in masquerade at Cragcastle. My interview with Hardridge, not wholly unexpected, yet a very curious one, filled with much that needed explanation. My startling discovery of the presence of the girl, and her still more startling revelations. The conception and partial working out of my plan, the success of which hung on the next few hours.
    Throughout, I reflected, I had been fortunate; things had worked out very much as I had planned and expected. My first motive in the affair had been almost completely satisfied; only one question remained unanswered—that of the cause of Hardridge’s hatred of John Maxon. There remained my awakened desire to serve Miss Maxon, and in that I hoped that Fate—it is my egotistic conceit to sometimes regard myself as Fate’s co-conspirator—would help me.
    As for Miss Maxon, she would have been either more or less than the very natural woman she was had she not felt fear in those hours. Indeed, she had no tangible reason for placing confidence in me—rather the reverse. It was largely because of that fact that I had urged her to stay in Cragcastle. Sometimes I thought it was partly because of that fact that she had