As she ended her story, May, overwrought, began crying softly. There are times when the simplicity of direct physical contact avails more than any magic of words to tell sympathy and love. It was so in this instance. Wet and bedraggled as he was from his descent into the lake, Roy drew into his arms the crouched form of the girl, and held her closely, while from them the rivulets slid silently away downward, to seek again the lake from which they had been ravished. The girl was first startled, then soothed, then wondrously content. The dawn came, stealing softly, and the light fell on them as a blessing.
Roy was aroused to sudden consternation, when a lull in his ecstatic emotion let him once again think of mundane things, for it flashed on him that the explosive to which the fuse had been attached still remained in Saxe’s chamber. In a word he explained the matter, and the two hastened to the cottage, where after a quick embrace they separated, May going to her room, to change into dry clothing, and Roy running to his friend. He entered Saxe’s chamber cautiously, yet moving rapidly, lighted the lamp, and looked about him. At once, his eyes fell on the bomb, which rested on a bureau, near the head of the bed. From it extended the remnant of fuse, which ran out through the open window. Roy drew this in, took up the bomb carefully, for he was not sure how sensitive it might be, and made his way out of the room, without awakening the sleeper. Within a minute, the instrument of crime was reposing innocuously on the bed of the lake, whither Roy had tossed it from the cliff. On his return to the house, he aroused his friend, and told of the latest attempt on the part of the engineer. Saxe was profoundly impressed by the narrowness of his escape from death, or mutilation. Nevertheless, his feeling was less by far than it must have been, but for his midnight discovery concerning the miser’s cipher. Without pausing to dress, he hurriedly related the fact to Roy, who was equally impressed. To make the matter wholly clear, Saxe would have exhibited the music to Roy, showing the place occupied by the hold, but the manuscript had mysteriously disappeared. The two hunted through the room thoroughly, although Saxe was sure that the sheet had been left on the bureau when he returned from Billy Walker’s room. There was no trace of it anywhere, and presently they abandoned the search, to stare at each other in bewilderment. It was Roy who first reached a solution of the puzzle: