A Poor Wise Man, Mary Roberts Rinehart [classic book list TXT] 📗

to tell Pink of his approaching marriage and to ask him to be present. He meant to tell him the facts. The intimacy between them was now very close, and he felt that Pink would understand. He neither wanted nor expected approval, but he did want honesty between them. He had based his life on honesty.

Yet the thing was curiously hard to lead up to. It would be hard to set before any outsider the conditions at the Boyd house, or his own sense of obligation to help. Put into everyday English the whole scheme sounded visionary and mock-heroic.

In the end he did not tell Pink at all, for Pink came in with excitement written large all over him.

“I sent for you,” he said, “because I think we’ve got something at last. One of our fellows has just been in, that storekeeper I told you about from Friendship, Cusick. He says he has found out where they’re meeting, back in the hills. He’s made a map of it. Look, here’s the town, and here’s the big hill. Well, behind it, about a mile and a half, there’s a German outfit, a family, with a farm. They’re using the barn, according to this chap.”

“The barn wouldn’t hold very many of them.”

“That’s the point. It’s the leaders. The family has an alibi. It goes in to the movies in the town on meeting nights. The place has been searched twice, but he says they have a system of patrols that gives them warning. The hills are heavily wooded there, and he thinks they have rigged up telephones in the trees.”

There was a short silence. Willy Cameron studied the rug.

“I had to swear to keep it to ourselves,” Pink said at last. “Cusick won’t let the Federal agents in on it. They’ve raided him for liquor twice, and he’s sick as a poisoned pup.”

“How about the county detectives?”

“You know them. They’ll go in and fight like hell when the time comes, but they’re likely to gum the game where there’s any finesse required. We’d better find out for ourselves first.”

Willy Cameron smiled.

“What you mean is, that it’s too good a thing to throw to the other fellow. Well, I’m on, if you want me. But I’m no detective.”

Pink had come armed for such surrender. He produced a road map of the county and spread it on the desk.

“Here’s the main road to Friendship,” he said, “and here’s the road they use. But there’s another way, back of the hills. Cusick said it was a dirt lane, but dry. It’s about forty miles by it to a point a mile or so behind the farm. He says he doesn’t think they use that road. It’s too far around.”

“All right,” said Willy Cameron. “We use that road, and get to the farm, and what then? Surrender?”

“Not on your life. We hide in the barn. That’s all.”

“That’s enough. They’ll search the place, automatically. You’re talking suicide, you know.”

But his mind was working rapidly. He was a country boy, and he knew barns. There would be other outbuildings, too, probably a number of them. The Germans always had plenty of them. And the information was too detailed to be put aside lightly.

“When does he think they will meet again?”

“That’s the point,” Pink said eagerly. “The family has been all over the town this morning. It is going on a picnic, and he says those picnics of theirs last half the night. What he got from the noise they were making was that they were raising dust again, and something’s on for to-night.”

“They’ll leave somebody there. Their stock has to be looked after.”

“This fellow says they drop everything and go. The whole outfit. They’re as busy raising an alibi as the other lot is raising the devil.”

But Willy Cameron was a Scot, and hard-headed.

“It looks too simple, Pink,” he said reflectively. He sat for some time, filling and lighting his pipe, and considering as he did so. He was older than Pink; not much, but he felt extremely mature and very responsible.

“What do we know about Cusick?” he asked, finally.

“One of the best men we’ve got. They’ve fired his place once, and he’s keen to get them.”

“You’re anxious to go?”

“I’m going,” said Pink, cheerfully.

“Then I’d better go along and look after you. But I tell you how I see it. After I’ve done that I’ll go as far as you like. Either there is nothing to it and we’re fools for our pains, or there’s a lot to it, and in that case we are a pair of double-distilled lunatics to go there alone.”

Pink laughed joyously.

Life had been very dull for him since his return from France. He had done considerable suffering and more thinking than was usual with him, but he had had no action. But behind his boyish zest there was something more, something he hid as he did the fact that he sometimes said his prayers; a deep and holy thing, that always gave him a lump in his throat at Retreat, when the flag came slowly down and the long lines of men stood at attention. Something he was half ashamed and half proud of, love of his country.

 

*

 

At the same time another conversation was going on in the rear room of a small printing shop in the heart of the city. It went on to the accompaniment of the rhythmic throb of the presses, and while two printers, in their shirt sleeves, kept guard both at the front and rear entrances.

Doyle sat with his back to the light, and seated across from him, smoking a cheap cigar, was the storekeeper from Friendship, Cusick. In a corner on the table, scowling, sat Louis Akers.

“I don’t know why you’re so damned suspicious, Jim,” he was saying. “Cusick says the stall about the Federal agents went all right.”

“Like a house a-fire,” said Cusick, complacently.

“I think, Akers,” Doyle observed, eyeing his subordinate, that you are letting your desire to get this Cameron fellow run away with your judgment. If we get him and Denslow, there are a hundred ready to take their places.”

“Cameron is the brains of the outfit,” Akers said sulkily.

“How do you know Cameron will go?”

Akers rose lazily and stretched himself. “I’ve got a hunch. That’s all.”

A girl came in from the composing room, a bundle of proofs in her hand. With one hand Akers took the sheets from her; with the other he settled his tie. He smiled down at her.