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

At something after seven o’clock that night Willy Cameron and Pink Denslow reached that point on the Mayville Road which had been designated by the storekeeper, Cusick. They left the car there, hidden in a grove, and struck off across country to the west. Willy Cameron had been thoughtful for some time, and as they climbed a low hill, going with extreme caution, he said:

“I’m still skeptical about Cusick, Pink. Do you think he’s straight?”

“One of the best men we’ve got,” Pink replied, confidently. “He’s put us on to several things.”

“He’s foreign born, isn’t he?”

“That’s his value. They don’t suspect him for a minute.”

“But - what does he get out of it?”

“Good citizen,” said Pink, with promptness. “You’ve got to remember, Cameron, that a lot of these fellows are better Americans than we are. They’re like religious converts, stronger than the ones born in the fold. They’re Americans because they want to be. Anyhow, you ought to be strong for him, Cameron. He said to tell you, but no one else.”

“I’ll tell you how strong I am for him later,” Willy Cameron said, grimly. “Just at this minute I’m waiting to be shown.”

They advanced with infinite caution, for the evening was still light. Going slowly, it was well after eight and fairly dark before they came within sight of the farm buildings in the valley below. Long unpainted, they were barely discernable in the shadows of the hills. The land around had been carefully cleared, and both men were dismayed at the difficulty of access without being seen.

“Doesn’t look very good, does it?” Pink observed. “I will say this, for seclusion and keeping away unwanted visitors, it has it all over any dug-out I ever saw in France.”

“Listen!” Willy Cameron said, tensely.

They stood on the alert, but only the evening sounds of country and forest rewarded them.

“What was it?” Pink inquired, after perhaps two minutes of waiting.

“Plain scare on my part, probably. I don’t so much mind this little excursion, Pink, as I hate the idea that a certain gentleman named Cusick may have a chance to come to our funerals and laugh himself to death.”

When real darkness had fallen, they had reached the lower fringe of the woods. Pink had the fault of the city dweller, however, of being unable to step lightly in the dark, and their progress had been less silent than it should have been. In spite of his handicap, Willy Cameron made his way with the instinctive knowledge of the country bred boy, treading like a cat.

“Pretty poor,” Pink said in a discouraged whisper, after a twig had burst under his foot with a report like the shot of a pistol. “You travel like a spook, while I - “

“Listen, Pink. I’m going in alone to look around. Stop muttering and listen to me. It’s poor strategy not to have a reserve somewhere, isn’t it?”

“I’m a poor prune at the best,” Pink said stubbornly, “but I am not going to let you go into that place alone. You can rave all you want.”

“Very well. Then we’ll both stay here. You are about as quiet as a horse going through a corn patch.”

After some moments Pink spoke again.

“If you insist on stealing the whole show,” he said, sulkily, “what am I to do? Run to town for help, if you need it?”

“I’m not going to round up the outfit, if there is one. I haven’t lost my mind. I’ll see what is going on, or about to go on. Then I’ll come back.”

“Here?”

Cameron considered.

“Better meet at the machine,” he decided, after a glance at the sky. “In half an hour you won’t be able to see your hand in front of you. Wait here for a half-hour or so, and then start back, and for heaven’s sake don’t shoot at anything you see moving. As a matter of fact, I might as well have your revolver. I won’t need it, but it may avoid any accidental shooting by a youth I both love and admire!”

“If I hear any shooting, I’ll come in,” Pink said, still sulky.

“Come in and welcome,” said Willy Cameron, and Pink knew he was smiling.

He took the revolver and slipped away into the darkness, leaving Pink both melancholy and disturbed. Unaccustomed to night in the woods, he found his nerves twitching at every sound. In the war there had been a definite enemy, definitely placed. Even when he had gone into that vile strip between the trenches, there had been a general direction for the inimical. Here -

He moved carefully, and stood with his back against a tree.

Not a sound came from the farm buildings. Willy Cameron’s progress, too, was noiseless. With no way to tell the lapse of time, and gauging it by his war experience, when an hour had apparently passed by, he knew that Cameron had been gone about ten minutes.

Time dragged on. A cow, unmilked, lowed plaintively once or twice. A September night breeze set the dying leaves on the trees to rustling, and stirred the dried ones about his feet. Pink’s mind, gradually reassured, turned to other things. He thought of Lily Cardew, for one. Like Willy Cameron, he knew he would always love her, but unlike Willy, the first pain of her loss was gone. He was glad that time was over. He was glad that she was at home again, safe from those - Some one was moving near him, passing within twenty feet. Whoever it was was stepping cautiously but blunderingly. It was not Cameron, then. He was a footfall only, not even an outline. Before Pink could decide on a line of action, the sound was lost.

Every sense acute, he waited. He had decided that if the incident were repeated, he would make an effort to get the fellow from behind, but there was no return. The wind had died again, and there was no longer even the rustling of the leaves to break the utter stillness.

Suddenly he saw a red flash near the barn, and an instant later heard the report of a pistol. Came immediately after that a brief fusillade of shots, a pause, then two or three scattering ones.

With the first shot Pink started running. He was vaguely conscious of other steps near him, running also, but he could see nothing. His whole mind was set on finding Willy Cameron. Alone he had not a chance, but two of them together could put up a fight. He pelted along, stumbling, recovering, stumbling again.

Another shot was fired. They hadn’t got him yet, or they wouldn’t be shooting. He raised his voice in a great call.

“Cameron! Here! Cameron!”

He ran into a low fence then, and it threw him. He had hardly got to his knees before the other running figure had hurled itself on him, and struck him with the butt of a revolver. He dropped flat and lay still.

*

For weeks Woslosky had known of the growing strength of the Vigilance Committee, and that it was arming steadily.

It threatened absolutely the success of his plans. Even the election of Akers and the changes he would make in the city police; even the ruse of other strikes and machine-made riotings to call away the state troops, - none of these, or all of them, would be effectual against an organized body of citizens, duly called to the emergency.

And such an organization was already effected. Within a week, when the first card reached his hands, it had grown to respectable proportions. Woslosky went to Doyle, and they made their counter-moves quickly. No more violence. A seemingly real but deceptive orderliness. They were dealing with inflammatory material, however, and now and then it got out of hand. Unlike Doyle the calculating, who made each move slowly and watched its results with infinite zest, the Pole chafed under delay.

“We can’t hold them much longer,” he complained, bitterly. “This thing of holding them off until after the election - and until Akers takes office - it’s got too many ifs in it.”

“It was haste lost Seattle,” said Doyle, as unmoved as Woslosky was excited.

Woslosky did not like Louis Akers. What was more important, he distrusted him. When he heard of his engagement to Lily Cardew he warned Doyle about him.

“He’s in this thing for what he can get out of it,” he said. “He’ll go as far as he can, with safety, to be accepted by the Cardews.”

“Exactly,” was Doyle’s dry comment, “with safety, you said. Well, he knows you and he knows me, and he’ll he straight because he’s afraid not to be.”

“When there’s a woman in it!” said the Pole, skeptically.

But Doyle only smiled. He had known many women and loved none of them, and he was temperamentally unable to understand the type of man who saw the world through a woman’s eyes and in them.

So Woslosky was compelled to watch the growth of Willy Cameron’s organization, and to hold in check the violent passions he had himself roused, and to wait, gnawing his nails with inaction and his heart with rage. But these certain things he discovered:

That the organization’s growth was coincident with a new interest in local politics, as though some vital force had wakened the plain people to a sense of responsibility.

That a drug clerk named Cameron was the founder and moving spirit of the league, and that he was, using Hendricks’ candidacy as a means, rousing the city to a burning patriotic activity that Mr. Woslosky regarded as extremely pernicious.

And that this same Willy Cameron had apparently a knowledge of certain plans, which was rather worse than pernicious. Mr.