Blacksheep! Blacksheep! Part 5

he sang through to the end to the old familiar air; followed by "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes."

They struck a stretch of road under repair and slowing up the Governor remarked carelessly as he picked his way through a line of red lanterns:

"Speaking of women, my dear Archie, do you share the joy of the lyric poets in the species?"

"Women?" gulped Archie, as surprised as though he had been asked suddenly his opinion of the _gazella dorcas_.

"The same, Archie. It occurs to me that you have probably had many affairs. A fellow of your coolness and dash couldn't fail to appeal to the incomprehensible s.e.x. I'm thirty-four but I've loved only one woman--that's the solemn truth, Archie. Occasionally small indiscretions, I confess; and I sometimes weakly yield to the temptation to flirt, but with my hand on my heart I declare solemnly that only once have I ever been swayed by the grand pa.s.sion. And strange as it may seem she's a bishop's daughter, though a saint in her own right! O wonderful!

O sublime!"

This confidence, vague as to the ident.i.ty and habitat of the lady of the Governor's adoration, nevertheless made it inc.u.mbent upon Archie to make some sort of reply. The Governor would probably be disappointed in him if he confessed the meagerness of his experiences, and he felt that it would be a grave error to jeopardize his standing with his companion.

"Well, I'm in the same boat," he answered glibly. "There's only one girl for me!"

"Magnificent!" cried the Governor. "I hope she's not beyond your reach like my G.o.ddess?"

"Well, I'll hardly say that," Archie replied. "But there are difficulties, embarra.s.sments, you know."

"Possibly your choice of the open road as a career is a bar to marriage?

Such situations are always deplorable."

"It is quite the other way round with me," Archie protested. "It was she who put me up to it!"

"What! Your inamorata wanted you to be a crook?" cried the Governor.

"She must be a wonderful girl! Shoplifter, perhaps? There are some jolly girls in that business! Or, maybe she's one of these confidence women who play a sure game and usually get by with it?"

"Nothing like that!" cried Archie hastily. "She just fancies the life--thinks it offers me a good chance to prove my mettle. She hates conventionality."

This reference to Isabel Perry, remote and guarded as it was, he defended only on the ground that it was necessary in some way to meet the Governor half-way in his confidences. And what he had said was really true, though to be sure Isabel could hardly be held responsible for the shooting at the Congdon house. He wondered what Isabel would say if she could see him with a criminal beside him, joy-riding in a stolen car. And it was no lie that he sincerely believed that he loved her. No other girl had ever roused him so much, or given him so good reason for standing off and taking a look at himself. His thoughts of her had led him far afield when the Governor remarked ruminatively:

"Do you manage to see her? That's the devil of it in my case! The lady's forbidden to recognize me in any way and the right reverend father is a tart old party and keeps sharp watch of her. You'd think a girl of twenty-two or thereabouts who spends her time in good works for the heathen and runs a Sunday-school cla.s.s in a slum would be indulged in her admiration for a jolly rogue like me! But the facts are decidedly otherwise. She's never quite brought her nerve to the point of breaking home ties and bolting with me; but she's declined to marry all the bachelor and widower dominies in the paternal diocese on my account. And a young bishop of the brightest prospects. Actually, my dear Archie!

There's a steadfast soul for you! But I can't see her and the regular mails are closed to us. Nevertheless we have an arrangement--highly romantic, by which if she ever needs me or thinks I can serve her in any way she's to leave a note in a certain place. It's her own idea and very pretty. Savors of the good old times when bold knights went riding up to the castle and yelled to the flinty-hearted duke inside to lower the draw-bridge and send out his daughter to be married on the spot or he'd be dropped in the moat with all his armor for a sinker."

Archie thought it would be a fine thing if he could make an arrangement with Isabel by which he could hear from her on his travels and he mustered courage to ask the Governor how he managed his line of communication.

"The device is the simplest possible. In our jauntings we shall pa.s.s a town where she visits a good deal--the home of an ancient aunt. It's a jolly old place, big grounds, with elms and maples all round, and there's a tea house with a tile floor, and there's a particular blue tile under a bench that can be pried out with a pen knife. That's our post-office, and much safer than registered mail. Of course my business correspondence is a different matter. I pick that up in countless places between here and California--reports of the boys, their hopes and ambitions and hints of schemes for acquiring sudden wealth. If you'd like to use some of these addresses and have mail forwarded I'll be glad to oblige you. You know how fussy the government is about the use of the mail for irregular purposes? Well, it rather tickled me to get some envelopes with S. S. S. P. printed in the corner and the number of a vacant lot in Sioux City as the address. A careless eye would think the initials stood for some sort of learned society but the real translation is Society for the Segregation of Stolen Property. I always use these in communicating with the brotherhood."

"There's a good deal about the business I don't know," said Archie with twinges of envy and admiration. "My bridges are all burned behind me and I'm not getting mail anywhere; but I'll remember your offer."

Further conversation was ended by the swinging of a lantern across the road.

"Ah!" exclaimed the Governor, with a curious rising inflexion. "I've been looking for that."

He slowed up instantly and in a moment halted car. The headlights played upon two men standing belligerently in front of the roadster.

"Good evening, gentlemen!" cried the Governor. "Short of gas or what's the trouble?"

"We're from the Portsmouth police," answered one of the men while the other ran to the rear of the car and swung a lantern over the license tag.

"Maine tag," he shouted.

"Certainly a Maine license," replied the Governor. "We're deputy sheriffs from c.u.mberland County looking for two crooks who've been robbing houses up our way. Got blank warrants all ready to serve if we catch the scoundrels."

Archie shuddered at the Governor's a.s.surance. The Portsmouth officers manifested the deepest professional interest and sympathy as the Governor with an authoritative air flourished two doc.u.ments.

"Burglar shot at Bailey Harbor last night," explained one of the officers; "they found his body this morning and we're looking for his accomplice. Guess he didn't come this way; we been on the road all night."

"We've held up everybody that looked suspicious all the way down and haven't seen a soul," the Governor replied in official tones. "Think the chaps we're looking for skipped by train. What did the dead burglar look like?"

"I talked with the Bailey mayor over the telephone and he said the dead man was a big fellow, clean-shaven with the scar of an old knife wound under his left arm. One of the cottagers shot him in his house, but he got away--crawled down on the sh.o.r.e and died. Boston police department's sending a man up to look at the body. Never knew so many burglaries up this way. Must be a whole gang at work."

"Certainly looks like it," the Governor a.s.sented. "Well, if you see a tall chap and a short thick-set fellow anywhere nail 'em for us. Old criminals with long records. They've been enjoying themselves up our way. The tall one doesn't say much, but the little chap is a smooth talker--can talk himself right out of jail if you give him a chance."

"We'll shoot first and get an explanation afterward if we see 'em,"

declared the Portsmouth officer, as his companion b.u.t.toned up his coat preparatory to getting back into the car.

"Glad to see you, boys!" exclaimed the Governor, backing the stolen machine and then calling a cheery "Good luck!" as he pa.s.sed their car.

Archie had been sitting pigeon-toed expecting that at any minute the two officers would discover points in the stolen car to arouse their suspicions; but the Governor's jaunty tone had evidently thrown them entirely off guard. He had hoped that the Governor would press for further details as to the killing of the burglar at the Harbor, but as matters stood he had learned nothing except that a burglar had been shot in one of the Harbor cottages and he was again torn with anxiety as to the ident.i.ty of the man he had fired at in the Congdon house.

The Governor began to chortle after a quick glance at the vanis.h.i.+ng red light of the Portsmouth car.

"Not the first time I've used warrants in that way! And they're good warrants too. I plucked a bunch of such literature from a deputy sheriff who got too inquisitive last summer and I had to grab and tie him to a tree up near Moosehead where I'd gone for a conference with some of the boys who were coming out of Canada. But I guess it's a sure thing those Portsmouth chaps were looking for me! I'd been strolling round quite freely with poor Hoky up the sh.o.r.e. If that chap had stuck his finger into the paint this machine would have gone no further. We'll do well to leave the main road for a while, then step briskly into a train somewhere."

"Your nerve in describing us--you and me, sitting right there before them--to those officers gave me a chill," confessed Archie. "If you'd talked to them much more we'd have been pinched for sure."

"You flatter the intelligence of the police. There are not a half a dozen detectives worthy of the name in the whole country. Possibly we may have a contest of wits with some of them before we close the season."

It had always been Archie's habit to greet courteously the policemen he pa.s.sed at night in the Avenue, little dreaming that the day would come when he would view the policing of the world with contemptuous disdain.

The Governor spoke of policemen and detectives with pity; they were so stupid, he said, though he admitted under Archie's cross-examination that they could be a nuisance at times.

"Make yourself as conspicuous as possible and they're hardly likely to bother you. There are times, of course, when one must hide, but the mistake our boys make is in hiding in places where the police can call them up by telephone and tell them to pay their own taxi fare to the nearest police station. I call on police chiefs in a purely social way now and then, and talk to them about the best way of reforming crooks.

It's their philosophy that no crook ever reforms; an absurd idea, of course. But there's no surer way to ingratiate yourself with a big fat detective than to ask how you can help poor repentant sinners, which gives him a chance to discourage you. There's nothing in it, he warns you. You thank him for his advice and ask him out to lunch. I've bought expensive dinners for some of the highest priced crime-ferrets in the game just for the joy of hearing their pessimism. They're all swollen up with the idea of their superior knowledge of human nature. But it serves a good purpose to cultivate them, for you're perfectly safe so long as you listen and don't try to tell them anything."

II

Toward morning the Governor again had recourse to the Elizabethan bards, then he lapsed suddenly into a meditative mood.

"It's always a bad sign when the season opens with the potting of some of the comrades. When there's one such catastrophe there are bound to be others. Now that Hoky's dead you'll hear of the killing of other burglars. Every householder on the coast will buy himself a gun and wait for a chance to shoot some misguided stranger he finds collecting bric-a-brac in the dark watches of the night. But Hoky's death is a loss to the underworld. At his best he could achieve the impossible. Once he spent a week on the roof of police headquarters in Cincinnati; really he did. Good weather and perfectly comfortable; used to stroll down through the building and go out for food; then back again. Chatted with the chief of detectives about his own crime, which was holding up the paymaster of a big factory. Bless me if Hoky didn't bury the money in a graveyard and hurry uptown and live right there with the whole police system right under him. He was a dear fellow, Hoky! By the way, you're mighty lucky that you didn't get a neat little chunk of lead right through the midriff, fooling with that drug store!"

In the rush of his thoughts Archie had forgotten his imaginary exploit at the Harbor drug store and realized that he must have his wits about him if he expected to retain the Governor's regard and confidence. The ease with which the supercrook rode around policemen vastly increased his feeling of reliance in his strange companion, and his only misgiving was that the daring resourceful rogue might abandon him.

As dawn broke the whistle and rumble of a train caused the Governor to stop the car and dive into his pockets for time tables of which he carried a large supply. He scanned one and hummed his satisfaction.

"We'll get rid of this machine right now as there's a station over there a little way where we can pick up a local right into Portsmouth. Don't be nervous. We'll pa.s.s for a couple of city men owning farms up here and just riding into town on a little business.

'Virtue is bold and goodness never fearful,'