Merriwell was very much out of sorts with himself. It did not seem possible that Lenning could play such a game and make it win. And yet, he was missing and the bullion was missing. Lenning’s past record rose up against him, and clinched the circumstantial evidence. Nevertheless, a lingering doubt stirred itself far down in Merriwell’s mind.
“Chirk up, son!” said Burke, in a kindly tone. “I don’t believe Mr. Bradlaugh will come down very hard on you. You’ve made the biggest kind of a hit with the general manager, and you can bet something handsome he’ll let you off as easy as he can.”
“Business is business,” Merry answered glumly. “I put myself on record and became responsible for Lenning. It was on my say-so alone that Lenning got the job here. I’m not asking any favors from Mr. Bradlaugh, but I’ll be dinged if I call on dad to fork over the six thousand. I’ll go out and find a mine, or something, and pay it all myself.”
“That’s the spirit. Anyhow, don’t go looking for the mine until we make sure the bullion can’t be recovered. The thieves haven’t got very much the start of us, and Hawkins is a regular terror when he cuts loose on the track of a lawbreaker. Pin your faith to Hawkins, boy, and hope for the best.”
“Maybe,” said Frank, after a little hard thinking, “Lenning isn’t mixed up in the robbery, after all.”
“Don’t fool yourself about that. You’re not helping
132
matters any by starting on the wrong track. Lenning is gone. That’s the strongest point against him. How can you get around that?”
“He may have met with foul play——”
Burke laughed scoffingly.
“Nonsense! Everything points to the fact that he engineered all the foul play himself.”
“Wait a minute, Burke,” urged Merriwell. “When I was coming to the mine, I heard something like a call for help. It was a smothered sort of cry, just as though some one was having a hard time using his voice.”
Burke began to show some interest.
“Where did you hear the cry?” he asked.
“Just as I started down the slope toward the mine. I was in the trail, at the time, and it wasn’t until the cry was repeated that I gave much attention to it. You see, the stamps made so much noise that I couldn’t be sure. After a while I thought I located the sound in a clump of greasewood. I pounded around in the bushes but couldn’t find any one. Just as I had given up and was starting on again, I heard the shout once more. This time it was still farther away from the trail, seemingly. I tried to follow it, and tumbled head over heels into one of your open cuts. It’s the cut just above the cyanide works. After I got out of that hole, I came down to the tanks and tried to find Lenning. Now, what did those cries for help mean?”
“Nothing,” answered Burke. “Some coyote was yelping in the hills. The yelp of a prowling brute like that, when it gets mixed with the noise of the stamps, gives a queer impression sometimes.”
“Well,” said Frank doubtfully, “maybe you are right, Burke, but I don’t think so.”
133
“If you really heard a cry,” was the skeptical rejoinder, “why couldn’t you find the person that gave it?”
“I may have missed him in the dark.”
“That’s possible, too, but not probable.”
“Another thing,” went on Merriwell, “I think Lenning was honest in his intentions, and that he meant to do the right thing here. He came to the hotel to see me, in the afternoon, and we walked out on the trail a short distance and had a talk. He wanted to thank me for helping him get a job here. He said he was going to make good, and that I’d never be sorry for what I’d done.”
“Oh, he’s smooth,” said Burke. “If he hadn’t been, how could he have pulled the wool over his smart old uncle’s eyes for so long? He had an object in going to town—and his object wasn’t to thank you for helping him. That was merely a makeshift to cover his real purpose.”
“What do you think his real purpose was?”
“That’s a poser. Maybe, though, he wanted to get word to his confederate—to tell him that he’d got the job, and that the work could be pulled off to-night.”
“That’s a guess, Burke, and maybe a wild one.”
“If it comes to that, Chip, we’re guessing about everything except one thing—and that thing’s as plain as print.”
“What is that?”
“Why, that Lenning is at the bottom of the whole black business. It must have been Lenning. But we’re wasting time here. I don’t know that we can do much, but we can try. Suppose we rummage around for clews?”
They rummaged for half an hour, but all they discovered was a blank. Just what sort of clews Burke was looking for, Frank did not know, but he helped the super paw around the laboratory, hoping against
134
 hope that something might turn up. In the midst of their fruitless search, Mr. Bradlaugh and Hawkins, the deputy sheriff, hurried into the building.
“Here’s a fine kettle of fish, Burke!” cried the exasperated general manager. “Mighty queer we can’t hang onto our gold, after we get hold of it. Has Lenning turned up?”
“No,” said the super, “he has vanished, and the gold has vanished. I reckon one explains the other.”
“I reckon ............