O’Hara’s mind was still in a state of turmoil, when, a few days later, an incident happened that shook his equanimity to its very foundation. The day in question had been hot and sweltering, and in O’Hara’s case, had been followed by a sleepless night. After hours of tossing about, he had risen from his couch, making his way through the darkness to the unlocked door. Flinging it open, a flood of pale moonlight poured into the room. A silvery sheen enveloped the slumbering buildings of the ranch, making them stand out in ghostly silhouette against the moon-lit background of sandy waste. As O’Hara softly closed the door behind him, a deep continuous snore from the opposite side of the room informed him that Tom Whalen had fallen into a profound sleep, and was likely to remain dead to the world for some hours at least.
The clean, crisp night air caused the blood to tingle in O’Hara’s veins. He surveyed the peaceful prospect a moment, then started on a brisk stroll among the various outbuildings, stopping now and then to fill his lungs with the glorious desert air.
Passing the odd-looking garage, he noticed that the doors were flung wide open, as though Jo, the Jap chauffeur, expected to return with the car before morning. He had retraced his steps to the door of his sleeping-room, and was about to woo sleep for a second time when the distant chugging of a motor car sounded on his ears.
“That’s only Jo,” he said to himself. “I wonder what the close-mouthed Oriental does on those lonesome night trips?”
But his own question caused him to smile. Jo’s night excursions were certainly mysterious, to say the least, but not more so than a hundred other things about the ranch that had risen to perplex him. Indeed, he was obliged to confess to himself that he had found out next to nothing about the real life of the strange group in which he was placed.
By this time the motor car had drawn much closer to the ranch. The steady chug-chug of the escaping gas, magnified tenfold by the vast impressive silence of the night, fell on the ear of the listener like a succession of sledge-hammer blows on a blacksmith’s anvil. O’Hara crept into a convenient patch of shadow, and waited for the car to pass on its way to the garage. But before coming into his angle of vision, the huge machine swerved abruptly to the right and made directly for the ranch-house.