e where he had
been thrust and take his revenge?

"What an idea," he thought to himself. "I must be going dotty, it's the
strain of expecting a bullet in my back all the time, I suppose. I was
never like this before."

Deede Dawson struck a match and put it to a gas-jet that lighted up
the whole room. Between him and Dunn lay the packing-case, and Dunn was
surprised to see that it was still there and that nothing had changed or
moved; and then again he said to himself that this was a foolish thought
only worthy of some excitable, hysterical girl.

"It's being too much for me," he thought resignedly. "I've heard of
people being driven mad by horror. I suppose that's what's happening to
me."

"You look--queer," Deede Dawson's voice interrupted the confused medley
of his thoughts. "Why do you look like that--Charley Wright?"

Dunn looked moodily across the case in which the body of the murdered
man was hidden to where the murderer stood.

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 res