Blacksheep! Blacksheep! Part 6

as well said by old William of Avon. We shall be bold, Archie, but not too bold."

He stopped, opened a gate and ran the car--thoroughly disreputable from its nocturnal bath in mud--through a barnyard and into an empty shed.

"Now for a brisk walk! The owner of this place sleeps late--not a sign of smoke from the kitchen chimney. And yet so many students of farm life wonder at the meager earnings of the honest husbandman! However, we've given that chap an excellent roadster and if he keeps his mouth shut he can run it till it falls to pieces for all anybody will ever know it's a stolen vehicle."

They crossed the railroad and were soon buying tickets from a sleepy stationmaster. The Governor talked briskly through the window as the agent stamped their tickets while Archie cowered at the door marveling that any one could face the problems of a precarious existence so gaily.

They alighted at Portsmouth without mishap, and Archie, recalling the primary object of his travels, stepped to the telegraph office and wired his sister as follows:

"Have been motoring with friend; hence delay in reporting. The house will not do. Plumbing in wretched condition, and house generally out of repair. Sorry but you will have to look further."

Then he wrote a telegram to his office in New York explaining that he had been motoring, which accounted for his failure to call for his pa.s.sage to Banff, thoughtfully adding that the cost of his unused sleeping car tickets should be charged to his personal account. After composing these messages he redeemed his suitcase in the check room and dropped it beside the Governor's battered kit bag on the platform.

"Ah! Burning the wires a little? I hope you are committing no indiscretion, son. I was admiring your baggage; that suitcase of yours would hold a king's wardrobe. We'll drive to the hotel, get a bath and a solid, old-fas.h.i.+oned breakfast, a hearty meal such as old Ike Walton recommended to fishermen eager for the early worm, and plan our further travels."

The Governor commanded the best service of the inn, obtaining two adjoining rooms with bath. He registered elaborately as Reginald Heber Saulsbury and wrote Archie down as Ashton Comly, das.h.i.+ngly indicating the residence of both as New York. In response to an inquiry for mail for Mr. Saulsbury the clerk made search and threw out a letter which the Governor opened indifferently and after a glance crumpled into his pocket.

"A note from Red Leary," he explained when they had reached their rooms.

"He's slipping along slowly toward Brattleboro, where we're to deliver that loot we've got to pick up. You will pardon my cheek in registering for you; unwarrantable a.s.sumption. I choose Ashton Comly as a dignified and distinctive _alias_; sounds a little southern; you may consider yourself for the present a scion of an ancient house of the Carolinas.

As for me, Saulsbury's a name I saw chalked on a box-car in the Buffalo yards and Reginald Heber is a fit handle to it. When I was in prep school we had a lecture by an eminent divine on the life of Reginald Heber, hymn writer, and that sort of thing. I'm rather ashamed of myself for borrowing the name of a man of singularly pure life, but it's the devil in me, lad! It's an awful thing to be born with a devil inside of you, but it could hardly be said that my case is unique. Here you are, also the possessor of a nasty little devil, and obviously, like me, a man of good bringing up. That's why I've warmed to you. You tried pulling rough talk on me at our first meeting, but you've got Harvard written all over you. No, not a word! We are two brunette sheep far astray from the home pastures and not apologizing for our color or previous condition of servitude."

Archie had always enjoyed the ease of good inns, and being in a comfortable house with his own effects at hand, he might have forgotten that he was a fugitive if it hadn't been for the propinquity of his companion, who was addressing himself with elaborate ceremonial to the preparation of his bath. The Governor's bag contained an a.s.sortment of silk s.h.i.+rts and underwear, a dress suit, a handsome set of toilet articles, and as Archie scrutinized them approvingly the Governor smiled, stepped to the door, and locked it.

"The property of a fastidious gentleman of breeding, you would say! You would never dream that thing has a false bottom!"

Archie would not have dreamed it, but the Governor dumped the remaining contents on the bed, fumbled in the bottom of the bag, lifted a concealed flap, and drew out a long fold of leather.

"You might think it a surgeon's pocket-kit, son, but you would be greatly in error. Drills, jimmies, even a light hammer--and here's a little contrivance that has been known to pluck the secret from most intricate combinations--my own invention. The common yegg habit of pouring an explosive fluid into the cracks of a strong box is obsolete.

I hold that such a procedure is vulgar, besides being calculated to make an ugly noise when not perfectly m.u.f.fled. By George, Archie, it occurs to me that you must have left your kit behind you in that absurd drug store at the Harbor! It is just as well that you are no longer enc.u.mbered with those playthings. Trust the Governor in future. I'm yearning for a cool grapefruit, so bestir yourself."

"I want to learn all the modern improvements," said Archie, fingering the burglar tools. "I've been playing the game wrong--decidedly wrong!"

"My favorite pupil!" cried the Governor, from the tub in which he was already rolling and splas.h.i.+ng. "You shall be my successor when I pa.s.s on to other fields. Destiny has thrown you in my path for this very purpose. You will rank high among the crooks of all history, the king of the underworld, feared and loved by the great comrades.h.i.+p who prey upon the world by night!"

Archie felt very humble under these promises and prophecies, and wondered whether there was really deep down in his soul some moral obliquity that the acute master crook had detected and responded to.

There had been clergymen and philanthropists among Archie's forebears, but never murderer or thief, and he was half-persuaded that he was the predestined black sheep that he had always heard gave a spot of color to the whitest flock.

At the breakfast table the Governor scanned a local paper and with a chirrup pa.s.sed it to Archie, pointing to a double-column headline:

A CARNIVAL OF BURGLARY IN MAINE

Archie's eyes fell upon the bizarre photograph of a dead man with which the page was ill.u.s.trated, and he choked on a fragment of grapefruit as he read the inscription: "Dead Thief, Ident.i.ty Unknown."

It was a ghastly thing with which to be confronted; and his perturbation increased as he read an account of the killing. It was in the house of Mr. Waldo S. c.u.mmings, a cottager, that the man had been shot, the mortal wound being inflicted by the householder's son, after an exciting battle. The dead body of the burglar had been found on the sh.o.r.e and the whole coast was being searched for his accomplice.

"That's poor old Hoky all right," murmured the Governor, b.u.t.tering a piece of toast reflectively. "How indecent to prop up a corpse that way and take a snapshot merely to satisfy the morbid curiosity of a silly public! As you seem to be entranced with the literary style of our Bailey Harbor correspondent, I shall take the liberty of helping you to a fried egg."

However, Archie's appet.i.te was pretty effectually spoiled by this paragraph:

An odd circ.u.mstance, more or less remotely connected with the killing of the burglar in the fas.h.i.+onable colony still remains to be explained. Officer Yerkes shortly before two o'clock, the hour at which the thief was shot in Mr. c.u.mmings's home, saw a man hurrying through Water Street. He bore the appearance of a gentleman, and the officer did not accost him, thinking him a yachtsman from one of the boats in the harbor who had been visiting friends ash.o.r.e. Yerkes says that the man walked oddly, pausing now and then as though in pain, and was carrying his right hand upon his left shoulder. Owing to the poor lighting of Water Street--a matter that has been a subject of frequent complaint to the city authorities--Yerkes was unable to catch a glimpse of the stranger's features. This morning drops of blood were found on the board walk crossed by the stranger where Officer Yerkes had seen him, and it is believed that this was another of the burglar-gang who was wounded in a struggle somewhere in the interior and was seeking the help of his confederate, presumably the man shot in the c.u.mmings house.

As the paper fell from Archie's hand the Governor took it up.

"You seem agitated, Archie! You must learn to conceal your feelings!"

When he had read the paragraph he glanced quickly at Archie, whose fork was beating a queer tattoo on his plate.

"Your work possibly?" murmured the Governor. "Compose yourself. That old lady over there has her eye on you. I'm afraid you lied to me about the drug store, for if you'd done any shooting in that neighborhood you would never have got out of town alive! No!"--he held up his hand warningly--"tell me nothing! But if we've got a murder behind us, we shall certainly be most circ.u.mspect in our movements. That's all piffle about Hoky having any confederate except me. And there's not a single one of the great comrades.h.i.+p on this sh.o.r.e--I know that; no one who knows the pa.s.sword of the inner door. You interest me more and more, Archie! I congratulate you on your splendid nerve."

Archie's nerve was nothing he could admire himself, but a second cup of coffee put warmth into his vitals and he recovered sufficiently to pay the breakfast check. If it was Congdon he had shot there was still the hope, encouraged by the newspaper, that the wounded man was in no haste to report his injury to the police. But Archie found little comfort in the thought that somewhere in the world there was a man he had shot and perhaps fatally wounded.

He must conceal his anxious concern from the Governor; for more than ever he must rely upon his strange friend for a.s.sistance in escaping from the consequences of the duel in the Congdon cottage.

III

"I was thinking," remarked the Governor, after a long reverie, "that it would be only decent for me to run back to Bailey Harbor and attend poor Hoky's funeral."

Archie stared aghast.

"Hoky was my friend," the Governor continued. "The newspaper says he's to be buried in the Potter's Field this afternoon, and it will only set us back a day in our plans. I can imagine how desperately forlorn the thing will be. Some parson will say a perfunctory prayer for a poor devil he believes to have gone straight to the fiery pit and they'll bury him in a pauper's grave. There will be the usual morbidly curious crowd hanging round, wagging their heads and whispering. I shall go, Archie, and you can wait for me. It will take only a few hours and we can spend the night here and resume our journey tomorrow."

"But a stranger appearing there! It's dangerous!" Archie protested.

"I wouldn't go back there for a million dollars!"

"Hoky would have taken the chance for me," said the Governor, firmly.

"The whole sh.o.r.e teems with tourists, and I'll leave it to your judgment whether any one would take me for a crook. Be careful of my feelings, Archie; I'm just a little emotional today. Hoky and I have run before the hounds too often for me to desert him now. The people up there may think what they please and go to the devil! Hoky had ideals of a sort; he never squealed on a pal; he was as loyal as the summer sun to ripening corn."

The Governor's interest in Hoky's obsequies was chivalrous beyond question, but Archie resented being left alone. The Governor's departure struck him in all the circ.u.mstances as a base desertion, and forlorn and frightened he locked himself in his room, expecting that any moment the police would batter down the door. The waiting for this catastrophe became intolerable and after an hour of it he went downstairs meditating a walk to the wharves. A young woman stood at the desk talking to the clerk, who scanned the pages of the register and shook his head.

"No Mrs. Congdon has registered here within a week, I'm sure. Will you leave any message?"

She said no and asked about trains.

"Did you want something, Mr. Comly?" the clerk asked courteously.

Archie had paused by the desk, staring open-mouthed at the young woman, who was asking the boy who held her bag to summon a taxi. If he was still possessed of his senses the girl in the gray tailored suit was Isabel Perry. The walls of the hotel office appeared to be tipping toward him. Isabel might have come to Portsmouth in answer to the prayer of his heart, but not Isabel asking for Mrs. Congdon. Isabel had glanced carelessly in his direction as the clerk addressed him as Mr. Comly and he had promptly raised his hat, only to be met with a reluctant nod and a look of displeasure with connotations of alarm. Having dramatized himself as appearing before her, a splendid heroic figure, to receive her praise for his exploits, this reception was all but the last straw to his spirit. Moreover, she was walking toward the door as though anxious to escape from him.

He darted after her, resolved to risk another snub before allowing her to slip away ignorant of the vast change that had been wrought in him since their meeting in Was.h.i.+ngton. A taxi was not immediately forthcoming and she frowned impatiently as he appeared beside her. A frowning Isabel had not entered into his calculations at all; it was a mirthful, light-hearted Isabel he was carrying in his heart. He would affect gaiety; he would let her see that he was a dare-devil, the man she would have him be.

"Really!" he exclaimed, twittering like an imbecile, "isn't it jolly that we've met in this way?"

"I'm not so sure of that! May I ask just why you are here under an a.s.sumed name?"

"Well, you know," he began, his lips twitching as he mopped his face, "you told me to throw a brick at the world and I've been following your advice." Under her stoical scrutiny his voice squeaked hysterically.

"It's perfectly jolly, the life I'm leading! You never heard of anything so wild and devilis.h.!.+ Miss Perry, behold your handiwork!"

Perspiring, stuttering, with the glitter of madness in his eyes, he was not on the whole an object to be proud of, and there was no pride or joy manifest in Miss Isabel Perry as she observed him critically, with the detachment of one who observes a wild animal in a menagerie. Her silence moved him to further frantic efforts to impress her with the fact that he was now a character molded to her hand.