ive my hands a limited scope. My two jailers and
myself beguiled an hour or two with a game of casino, and I was able to
shuffle the cards when the deal fell to me, but the manacles were
sufficiently hampering to give them a sense of entire security.

I welcomed with some eagerness an opportunity to visualize my
environment, since there was now only one day left before the calling of
the Marcus cases on the county court docket, and if I was to learn
anything which might facilitate my escape it must be shortly
accomplished.

I presumed that I had been brought to some remote and isolated point in
the hills, and that even if I could rid myself of handcuffs and
guardians, there still lay ahead of me the problem of a journey,
probably a long one, through an unknown country.

I had still much to learn, and one of the things which did not occur to
me, but which time made clear, was that Garvin never played his game
twice in the same fashion. He had known that my disappearance would wake
into frantic activity the smaller, but no less vigilant force of private
investigators who served Cal Marcus. All the inaccessible hiding places
in the heart of the timbered hills would be under espionage. He
accordingly decided that the best method of keeping me under cover would
be somewhat similar to that of the man in the story who knew his rooms
were to be searched for a document he sought to conceal, and who adopted
the method of putting it in full sight on the mantel shelf, where the
searchers into corners and secret places did not take the trouble to
open its envelope.

I had, in fact, been brought to a cabin which, although it nestled in a
deep gorge a half-mile from the public road, and was invisible to
passers-by, was still less than a mile and a quarter from the town
itself. These things I was to discover on the morning of the trial when,
feeling secure that it was now too late for me to avail myself of the
information, Curt Dawson yielded to the temptation of informing me just
how fully I had been stung.

But on my first visit to the ground floor I saw little that added to my
knowledge. For months the place had palpably been swept by winds and
battered by hail, tenantless and dilapidated. Indeed, the loft where I
had been confined was more habitable than the lower floor. I at once
recognized that they meant to leave the cabin with its air of desertion
unchanged, so that any straggling investigator would pass it by with
unarou