During the next long quarter of an hour the two men discovered that either they had failed to construct twenty of the devices or else left one somewhere. After an instructive few minutes listening to the genial Ketteridge's viciously flaying tongue, I heard them decide that nineteen would have to do, although Scheiman would not sleep until he was absolutely positive that he had not left one lying about the shed in Baskerville Hall. They went back to their task; I went back to waiting.
I was not close enough to the edge of the cliff to see them both, although their lights flickered occasionally on the oak copse on the opposite bank and from time to time one or the other would walk briefly through one of the places I could see. Ketteridge now appeared with the spool of wire in one hand. He made a loop of it, laid the loop on the ground, and put two or three rocks on it to hold it in place. He then stood up and began walking upstream, letting the wire spool out behind him, and disappeared around the bend.
I wondered how far he would go, to set up the triggering device.
I wondered if Holmes would give the river wide berth on his return.
I wondered what I should do if Holmes did not reappear shortly.
I did not wonder for long, though; to my horror I heard shouts echoing from upstream, loud shouts of anger that could only mean one thing. I flung myself off my rock and ran silently around the rise of the tor, and there I saw Holmes, caught in the beam of Ketteridge's torch, his open hands outstretched.
"Stand there and don't move a muscle, Mr Holmes," Ketteridge was saying. "I'm a dead-eye shot."
"Of that I have no doubt, Mr Ketteridge," said Holmes. He stood and waited while the narrow beam came closer, and soon Ketteridge was in front of him, blinding Holmes with his torch.
"Hands on top of your head, Holmes," he ordered, and did a thorough search of Holmes' pockets, ending up with Holmes' gun, folding knife, and torch. By this time another light was shining from the riverbed and Scheiman's panic-laden voice could be heard shouting enquiries.
"It's nothing, David," Ketteridge shouted back over his shoulder. "Just an intruder. You'd better finish laying those charges before this storm is completely gone. I'll blow it as soon as you're ready." The other torch beam wavered and then disappeared, and I strained to hear what Ketteridge was saying to Holmes.
"Well, well, Mr Holmes. I was afraid of this."
"That, I presume, is why you attempted to distract me with Pethering."
"I'm sorry it didn't do the trick. I liked you, Mr Holmes, and I'd have been just as happy to do my business here and be away without meeting you again. Speaking of which, where is your wife?"
I started, and began to creep backwards towards the safety of my tor.
"Asleep in Lew House I should think," Holmes told him.
"No assistants at all, then?"
"I fear not."
Ketteridge kept the torch on Holmes' face for half a minute, then without warning dropped it down for a fast search of the hillside. I leapt back as soon as I saw it coming, and backed rapidly towards the rocks from which I had come. I heard Ketteridge say something to Holmes, and then the two of them started towards me.
I thought Ketteridge would play his torch over the side of the clitter that faced the river and be satisfied with that, so I circled around to the far side of the tor. It appeared, however, that he was prepared to be a good deal more thorough; his light was coming around to my right, and unless I fled away over Sourton Common, where a chance lightning strike would show me up like a spotlight, I had to keep the central mound of the tor between us. I continued circling, feeling the shaky ground under my feet and balancing with the damned gun in my hand and no light on my way. He was gaining on me quickly, the very edge of his beam lighting the top of a pile of rocks to my right before skipping away, but in moments he would have me. I dived for the pile, thinking to freeze into a rocklike lump beneath my coat, but to my astonishment I discovered that the solid mound of rock was split down the middle. I shoved my way into the concealing crack, and precipitated headfirst into a low, smooth, and remarkably dry depression among the stones; I was thoroughly hidden, within the very heart of the tor.
I squirmed around to look out of the entrance, and watched the light approach. It lit the entrance with a shocking burst of brightness, but the flare of reflection as the beam passed over my glasses must have appeared like any other reflection from off the watery slope. I shrank back and watched them pass, and after they were well past I slowly emerged, as wary as any rabbit venturing from its bury.
They started down the slope, Ketteridge far enough behind Holmes to keep his prisoner at a distance, but too close for me to chance the scattered shot from my own gun, even if, as I found when I came to the edge of the cliff, they had not been on a direct line of fire. I sat down on my heels to see what developed.
Scheiman stood watching them come down the steep hillside, gun in one hand and torch in the other. His tool bag lay empty on the ground, the twenty heavier two-inch pipes in an untidy pile next to it, the nineteen charges buried in their place. Ketteridge put his pistol in his pocket and walked over to his own bag, from which he took a ball of twine. Approaching Holmes, he said, "My secretary is not quite as good a shot as I am, Mr Holmes, but he is certainly good enough for this distance. Don't try to move."
He bent and tied Holmes' hands together behind his back, then hobbled his feet loosely, but securely. He tied it off, cut the end with his pocket knife, and stood away from Holmes.
"Be seated, Mr Holmes. We won't be very long. David, watch him closely."
Holmes looked around and chose a mossy rock, shuffled over to it, and took his seat. Scheiman watched him intently, and moved over near him.
"Don't stand too close to him, David," Ketteridge warned, and then went back to finishing the connexion of each of the nineteen charges to the master switch at the end of the spool of wire. Lightning flared briefly overhead, but the grumble that followed was distant, almost perfunctory. Holmes had not looked up at me once. I could not tell if he knew I was there, although he would be certain I was not too far away. There was no other place for me to be. There was also no means for me to reach Holmes, no way I could dispatch the two men without putting Holmes into mortal danger, either from their guns or from the wide spread of shot from my own. I should have to wait, and hope he could provide me with an opening. Meanwhile, I knew, he would encourage Ketteridge to talk.
Holmes eased his shoulders and spoke in a clear voice to Ketteridge where he knelt over the pieces of wire. "Am I right in assuming that you and Mr Scheiman here first met on the boat from New York? This plan of yours seems to have been assembled somewhat, shall we say, piecemeal?"
Ketteridge's sure hands did not react. "We did, yes. It was a very monotonous journey, and when David came onboard in New York, what else was there to do but talk?" He reached down into a pocket and drew out a small pair of wire cutters, and snipped the join before wrapping it methodically. "I had no plans for England. It didn't seem the sort of place for my particular kind of scheme, so I was just going to relax, see the countryside, and spend some of the money I'd made…elsewhere." Satisfied with his handiwork, he dug into his bag for a bit of broken tile, propped it over the wires to keep the rain off, and then shifted over to the next pipe. "We talked around things, if you know what I mean. It was funny, a meeting of minds, you might say. Nobody else in the world would've known what we were really talking about, but David and I knew." He paused to look over his shoulder. "I suppose you might've known, if you'd been listening in. No, we recognised each other like two Masons with a handshake, and sort of told each other about our scams, without saying much direct. Anyway, when the boat docked we said good-bye without thinking any more about it. I mean to say, he'd amused me with his talk about the school he'd run in upstate New York that went bust—oh, don't worry, David," he said at his secretary's protest, "Mr Holmes knows about it, I'm sure. And David knew something about my little tricks in the goldfields, buying up dud land and selling it off as claims to men hundreds of miles away. Neither of us told the other anything that might be called incriminating, but we were sort of showing off our cleverness, I suppose, to someone who'd appreciate it.