But if, now being on the job in person, he could rig a scheme to make Britt disclose, what could be done for coadjutor Wagg?  There was a reward posted for information leading to the recovery of the money.  Britt had offered that reward.  He had made quite a show of the thing in the public prints.  He pledged himself to pay the sum of two thousand five hundred dollars from his own pocket, and Vaniman bitterly realized just why Britt had adopted that pose.  Would Wagg be content with the sop of the reward?

The man who had been declared dead knew that he must play for time.  He ran over various plans in his head.  He did not feel like blurting out the truth to Mr. Wagg and asking what that effectually compromised gentleman was going to do about it.  He needed Mr. Wagg.  He thought of pleading that the summer landscape was so much different from the winter lay of the land, when the snow was heaped in the gullies and on the hills, that he was bothered in remembering just where he had planted the treasure that night; he reflected that he might show Mr. Wagg a hole in the rocks and assert that some of the persistent Egyptian gold hunters had undoubtedly located the money and taken it for themselves; being moved to more desperate projects, he meditated on the plan of coming across to Wagg with the whole story, showing him that Britt must be guilty, and thereby turning a blackmailer loose on the magnate with plenty of material to use in extorting what Wagg might consider fair pay for the work he had put in.

But Vaniman was freshly free from prison walls.  Just then he was psychologically incapable of standing up for himself as a real man ought.  His sense of innocence had not been able to withstand that feeling of intimidation with which a prisoner becomes obsessed.  Right along with him was the man who had been persistently his guard in the prison.  Wagg’s narrow rut of occupation had had its full effect on his nature.  His striated eyeballs had a vitreous look; they were as hard as marbles.  Vaniman knew that he could not look at those eyes and tell a convincing lie.  In view of Wagg’s settled convictions in the matter of the treasure, the real truth might be harder to support than a lie.

Vaniman went into the van like a whipped dog into a kennel and lay awake and wrestled with his difficulties.

During the progress of the pilgrimage the next day Wagg halted frequently.  Vaniman could hear the conversations between his charioteer and the natives of the section.  Mr. Wagg was seeking information and at the same time he gave out a modest amount of revelation about himself and his need of a retired spot where he might recuperate.  He explained that he wanted to find a camp in some place so remote that nobody would be coming around jarring his nerves.

Eventually he got on track of what he wanted.  A native told him about an abandoned log house on the top of a mountain called “Devilbrow.”