These thoughts flitted through his mind, yet not consecutively, as the car left the grounds, and turned on to the main road, leading citywards. They were still skirting the Coolidge estate, although the house behind was concealed by shrubbery. The road descending into a ravine spanned by a concrete bridge, and a rather dense growth of trees shut out the surrounding landscape. Nothing moving was in sight. Suddenly, just as they cleared the bridge, and began to mount the opposite grade, there came a sharp report, sounding so close at hand the chauffeur clamped on his brake, and glanced anxiously over the side of the car.
"Blow-out, wasn't it, sir?"
"No," said West shortly, staring himself out into the thicket of trees at their left. "It was a shot fired over there; a revolver I should say. Wait a second, Sanders, until I see what has happened."
It was largely curiosity which led him to leave the car. The very conviction that it was a revolver which had been discharged brought a desire to learn the cause of the shot. The sound of either a rifle or a shot-gun in that lonely spot would have been instantly dismissed as natural enough, but a pistol was different. That was no place for such a weapon. It somehow had a grimly sinister sound. Led forward by a dim path, he plunged down the sharp incline of the hill, and pressed his way through the thick fringe of trees beyond. Behind these ran a wire fence, guarding a stretch of meadow, the high, uncut grass waving in the wind. Nothing was in sight except this ripening field of clover sweeping upward to the summit of an encircling ridge. The silence was profound; the loneliness absolute.
It was this fact which startled West from curiosity into suspicion. Surely there had been a shot fired--a revolver shot--almost on the very spot where he stood. He could not doubt the evidence of his own ears. Yet who had fired? For what purpose? and how had the party disappeared so completely during that narrow margin of time? There was no place where a man could hide unless he lay flat in the clover; and what occasion would any one have to thus seek concealment? Even if the shooter knew of the passing automobile, or heard his approach through the trees, there could be no reasonable cause for concealment. Determined now to learn exactly what had happened, West pressed his passage forward through the vines of the fence, and emerged into the field beyond. A half dozen yards and he found the clover trampled, as though a man had passed that way. The trail led into a shallow depression, past a rather large boulder, near which the trampling of the grass was even more plainly revealed, as though the stranger had remained here for some time, had even seated himself, and then, abruptly ended a few yards away. Evidently the fellow had turned back at this point, and retraced his steps.