His object in enlisting this support was now
perfectly clear to the victim of his duplicity. Barnes had admitted
that he was bound by a promise to aid the prisoner in an effort to
escape from the house; even a slow-witted person would have reached
the conclusion that a partial understanding at least existed between
captive and champion. Sprouse staked everything on that conviction.
Through Barnes he counted on effecting an entrance to the almost
hermetically sealed house.
Evidently the simplest, and perhaps the only, means of gaining
admission was through the very window he was supposed to guard. Once
inside her room, with the aid and connivance of one in whom the
occupant placed the utmost confidence, he would be in a position to
employ his marvellous talents in accomplishing his own peculiar ends.
Barnes recalled all of the elaborate details preliminary to the actual
performance of that amazing feat, and realised to what extent he had
been shaped into a tool to be used by the master craftsman. He saw
through the whole Machiavellian scheme, and he was now morally certain
that Sprouse would have sacrificed him without the slightest
hesitation.
In the event that anything went wrong with their enterprise, the man
would have shot him dead and earned the gratitude and commendation of
his associates! There would be no one to question him, no one to say
that he had failed in the duty set upon him by the master of the
house.
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