“I think not,” said Captain Stewart, but he breathed hard, for he knew well enough that there lay the gravest danger.  “I think not,” he said again.

He made a rather surprisingly accurate guess at the truth—­that Ste. Marie had started out upon impulse, without intending more than a general reconnaissance, and therefore without leaving any word behind him.  Still, the shadow of danger uplifted itself before the man and he was afraid.  A sudden gust of weak anger shook him like a wind.

“In Heaven’s name,” he cried, shrilly, “why didn’t that one-eyed fool kill the fellow while he was about it?  There’s danger for us every moment while he is alive here.  Why didn’t that shambling idiot kill him?”

Captain Stewart’s outflung hand jumped and trembled and his face was twisted into a sort of grinning snarl.  He looked like an angry and wicked cat, the other man thought.

“If I weren’t an over-civilized fool,” he said, viciously, “I’d go up-stairs and kill him now with my hands while he can’t help himself.  We’re all too scrupulous by half.”

The Irishman stared at him and presently broke into amazed laughter.

“Scrupulous!” said he.  “Well, yes, I’m too scrupulous to murder a man in his bed, if you like.  I’m not squeamish, but—­Good Lord!”

“Do you realize,” demanded Captain Stewart, “what risks we run while that fellow is alive—­knowing what he knows?”

“Oh yes, I realize that,” said O’Hara.  “But I don’t see why you should have heart failure over it.”

Captain Stewart’s pale lips drew back again in their catlike fashion.

“Never mind about me,” he said.  “But I can’t help thinking you’re peculiarly indifferent in the face of danger.”

“No, I’m not!” said the Irishman, quickly.  “No, I’m not.  Don’t you run away with that idea!  I merely said,” he went oh—­“I merely said that I’d stop short of murder.  I don’t set any foolish value on life—­my own or any other.  I’ve had to take life more than once, but it was in fair fight or in self-defence, and I don’t regret it.  It was your coldblooded joke about going up-stairs and killing this chap in his bed that put me on edge.  Naturally I know you didn’t mean it.  Don’t you go thinking that I’m lukewarm or that I’m indifferent to danger.  I know there’s danger from this lad up-stairs, and I mean to be on guard against it.  He stays here under strict guard until—­what we’re after is accomplished—­until young Arthur comes of age.  If there’s danger,” said he, “why, we know where it lies, and we can guard against it.  That kind of danger is not very formidable.  The dangerous dangers are the ones that you don’t know about—­the hidden ones.”

He came forward a little, and his lean face was as hard and as impassive as ever, and the bright blue eyes shone from it steady and unwinking.  Stewart looked up to him with a sort of peevish resentment at the man’s confidence and cool poise.  It was an odd reversal of their ordinary relations.  For the hour the duller villain, the man who was wont to take orders and to refrain from overmuch thought or question, seemed to have become master.  Sheer physical exhaustion and the constant maddening pain had had their will of Captain Stewart.  A sudden shiver wrung him so that his dry fingers rattled against the wood of the chair-arms.