It was very hot, and he was stifling with inaction.  What was Barker doing, and why had not Stacy telegraphed to him?  And what were those people in the courtyard doing?  Were they discussing news of further disaster and ruin?  Perhaps he was even now a beggar.  Well, his fortune might go with his faith.

But the crowd was simply looking at the roof of the hotel, and he now saw that a black smoke was drifting across the courtyard, and was conscious of a smell of soot and burning.  He stepped down from the veranda among the mingled guests and servants, and saw that the smoke was only pouring from a chimney.  He heard, too, that the chimney had been on fire, and that it was Mrs. Van Loo’s bedroom chimney, and that when the startled servants had knocked at the locked door she had told them that she was only burning some old letters and newspapers, the refuse of her trunks.  There was naturally some indignation that the hotel had been so foolishly endangered, in such scorching weather, and the manager had had a scene with her which resulted in her leaving the hotel indignantly with her half-packed boxes.  But even after the smoke had died away and the fire been extinguished in the chimney and hearth, there was an acrid smell of smouldering pine penetrating the upper floors of the hotel all that afternoon.

When Mrs. Van Loo drove away, the manager returned with Demorest to the rooms.  The marble hearth was smoked and discolored and still littered with charred ashes of burnt paper.  “My belief is,” said the manager darkly, “that the old hag came here just to burn up a lot of incriminating papers that her son had intrusted to her keeping.  It looks mighty suspicious.  You see she got up an awful lot of side when I told her I didn’t reckon to run a smelting furnace in a wooden hotel with the thermometer at one hundred in the office, and I reckon it was just an excuse for getting off in a hurry.”

But the continued delay in Stacy’s promised telegram had begun to work upon Demorest’s usual equanimity, and he scarcely listened in his anxiety for his old partner.  He knew that Stacy should have arrived in San Francisco by noon.  He had almost determined to take the next train from the Divide when two horsemen dashed into the courtyard.  There was the usual stir on the veranda and rush for news, but the two new arrivals turned out to be Barker, on a horse covered with foam, and a dashing, elegantly dressed stranger on a mustang as carefully groomed and as spotless as himself.  Demorest instantly recognized Jack Hamlin.

He had not seen Hamlin since that day, five years before, when the latter had accompanied the three partners with their treasure to Boomville, and had handed him the mysterious packet.  As the two men dismounted hurriedly and moved towards him, he felt a premonition of something as fateful and important as then.  In obedience to a sign from Barker he led them to a more secluded angle of the veranda.  He could not help noticing that his younger partner’s face was mobile as ever, but more thoughtful and older; yet his voice rang with the old freemasonry of the camp, as he said, with a laugh, “The signal has been given, and it’s boot and saddle and away.”