"Why, I imagine so," he answered. "Their tools are as smart a lot as
ever I saw in my life. They had spies all round the house to help them
escape, and this one would have got away too, if I hadn't tripped
him up."

"Curse you!" the bound man muttered.

Virginia looked at him and shivered.

"Well, I am glad you caught one of them," she said. "I will go and tell
my uncle."

But Phineas Duge already knew all about it. He smiled when Virginia
brought him her news.

"They must be desperate indeed," he said, "to run such risks. However, I
suppose they have bought these fellows' silence safe enough."

The midday papers were full of the attempted burglary. Before the
magistrates, the man who had been apprehended said not a word. He seemed
to accept his position with stolid fatalism. The cross-examination as to
his associates, and the motive of the attempted robbery, was absolutely
futile.

Phineas Duge kept up during the day the assumption of severe
indisposition. No one was allowed to see him. A bulletin posted outside
announced that he had been ordered complete and entire rest; and all the
time the telephone wires from his bedroom, high up in the back of the
house, were busy flashing messages east and west, all over the country.
The work in which he had been engaged was zealously pushed home. No one