After a pause, and speaking with an effort, he said:
"You'd look queer if some one with a pistol was watching you all
the time the way you watch me."
"You do what I tell you and you'll be all right," Deede Dawson
answered. "You see that packing-case?"
Dunn nodded.
"It's big enough," he said.
"Would you like to know?" asked Deede Dawson slowly with his slow,
perpetual smile. "Would you like to know what's in it--Charley
Wright?"
And again Dunn was certain that a faint suspicion hung about those
last two words, and that his life and death hung very evenly in
the balance.
"Silver, you said," he muttered. "Didn't you?"
"Ah, yes--yes--to be sure," answered Deede Dawson. "Yes, so I
did. Silver. I want the lid nailed down. There's a hammer and
nails there. Get to work and look sharp."
Dunn stepped forward and began to set about a task that was so
terrible and strange, and that yet he had, at peril of his life--at
peril of more than that, indeed--to treat as of small importance.
Standing a little distance from the lighted gas-jet, Deede Dawson
watched him narrowly, and as Dunn worked he was very sure that to
betray the least sign of his knowledge would be to bring instantly
a bullet crashing through his brain.
It seemed curious to him that he had so carefully replaced
everything after making his discovery, and that without any
forethought or special intention he had put back everything so
exactly as he had found it when the slightest neglect or failure
in that respect would most certainly have cost him his life.
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