And this seemed to him a great pity, so that he began to form confused and foolish plans for securing that his friend’s fate should become known.

With a sudden start, for he had not known he was there, he found himself standing on the threshold of that attic of death.  It was quite dark up here, and from behind Deede Dawson’s voice told him impatiently to enter.

He obeyed, wondering if ever again he would cross that threshold alive, and Deede Dawson followed him into the dark attic so that Dunn was appalled by the man’s rashness, for how could he tell that his victim would not take this opportunity to rise up from the place 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.