"It's easy to guess _why_," said Carnes, gravely. "The old head was out of this business; for some reason it has been entrusted to underlings, and bunglers."
"But won't old Harding give these rascals warning by claiming his stolen property?" I asked, dubiously.
"Not he," replied Carnes. "Harding's too cute and too stingy for that. He reasons that the thieves, having begun to display their booty, may grow more reckless. He is one of the few who think that the body was not placed in the hay by the doctor's hirelings; he intends to keep silent for the present and look sharp for any more of his stolen merchandize."
"Then, Carnes, we have no bars to our present progress. To-morrow we get down to actual business."
Again we sat late into the night discussing and re-arranging our plans, only separating when we had mapped out a course which we, in our egotistical blindness, felt assured was the true route toward success; and seeking our slumbers as blissfully unconscious of what really was to transpire as the veriest dullard in all Trafton.
When I awoke next morning, I was surprised to find my erratic body-servant not in attendance.
Carnes, for convenience, and because of lack of modern hotel accommodations, occupied a cot in my room, which was the largest in the house, and sufficiently airy to serve for two. Usually, he was anything but a model serving man in the matter of rising and attending to duty, for, invariably, I was out of bed an hour before him, and had made my toilet to the music of his nasal organ, long before he broke his morning nap.
This morning, however, Carnes was not snoring peacefully on his cot underneath the open north window, and I arose and made a hasty toilet, feeling sure that something unusual had called him from his bed this early.
Wondering much, I descended to the office, where an animated buzz warned me that something new and startling was under discussion.
Usually at that hour this sanctum was untenanted, save for the youth who served as a combination of porter and clerk, and perhaps a stray boarder or two, but this morning a motley crowd filled the room. Not a noisy, blustering crowd, but a gathering of startled, perplexed, angry looking men, each seeming hopeful of hearing something, rather than desirous of saying much.