Burgess followed him back to
Cordova, last night."
They went down and climbed into the car, and were soon on the road.
A little distance from the Mercer Institute they came upon a compact
looking man seated upon the top rail of a fence, chewing at a straw.
He wore heavy, much-splashed boots and a sun-scorched suit of clothes.
"Ah," said Ashton-Kirk, "I see Burgess is still on the job."
"Burgess," echoed Pendleton. He looked at the man upon the fence in
surprise; except for the very broad shoulders there was no
resemblance.
However, Burgess grinned amiably through a rather neglected growth of
beard.
"I expected you along about this time," said he, to the investigator.
"Is everything all right?" asked Ashton-Kirk.
"He's still there," answered Burgess, and he nodded toward a house
with a peaked and slated roof which stood some little distance up an
intersecting road. It was the same house through the window of which
Pendleton had seen Edyth Vale some nights previously, but, somehow, it
seemed strange and unfamiliar in daylight.
"I can see three sides of it from here," went on Burgess. "And if he
dropped out of one of the windows on the fourth side I could sight him
before he'd gone fifty yards.
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