CHAPTER XIIINOT A MOMENT TOO SOON.
As Archie McCormick struck out along the forest path which led to Lysander Cobmore’s farm he was not especially pleased to have Percy Joblots tagging along behind. He would much rather have been alone. There was so much to think of and plan out that he would have liked to be able to give his whole mind to it instead of having to think of this little whipper-snapper who, from the first, seemed to have considerable difficulty in keeping up with the Yale man’s long stride.
“You mutht be in an awful hurry,” he panted, after they had gone about half a mile.
“I am,” snapped McCormick, without looking back.
There was silence for a few moments, broken only by the labored breathing of Percy.
“Grathiouth thaketh!” he gasped presently. “I’m motht dead. Couldn’t you walk a little thlower for jutlit a few minuteth?”
Growling an irritated response, Archie slowed down a little, but very soon was back at the old speed. He really did not intend to hustle so, but his mind was so wholly given over to the problem which he had to solve that, unconsciously, he almost flew over the rough path.
“Merthy!” moaned Joblots, mopping his face with a delicate linen handkerchief. “Thith ith awful!”
McCormick did not hear him, so preoccupied was he, and the dapper little fellow struggled on for a quarter of a mile farther in panting silence.
“Can’t we retht for jutht a minute?” he begged, at the end of that time.
Archie whirled around swiftly.
“Why the dickens do you want to rest?” he demanded fiercely. “I didn’t ask you to come with me! I’ve got to get to Middleberry as quick as I possibly can, and here you drag along and talk about wanting to rest. Gee! It’s enough to try the patience of a saint.”
Joblots shrank back and instinctively put up a defensive arm. Apparently he was afraid Mac was going to hit him, and the look of fear on his puny, insignificant face brought the big Yale man swiftly to his senses.
“Don’t be a fool!” he growled, in an apologetic tone. “You don’t think I’d hit you, I hope? I suppose I was a bit sharp, but you mustn’t mind what I said. I’m worried clean out of my head, almost, about something. We’ll rest a little and then take it slower.”
Joblots instantly plucked up heart at this and became all smiles. They stopped for a few minutes and then went on again at moderate speed, and all the way through the woods he drove McCormick almost wild with his well-meant, but perfectly idiotic, chatter.
At last, to McCormick’s infinite relief, the farmhouse was in sight.
Cobmore was at home, and, after a little persuasion, was induced to let Archie borrow a horse and buggy to take him in to town.
He seemed to be a little curious as to the reason for the trip, but the Yale man was not communicative, so the farmer was obliged to content himself with sly twitting of Joblots, who appeared to be absolutely oblivious to his banter.
It was a little after eight when they left Cobmore’s. At half-past nine McCormick drove recklessly through the long village street, and, pulling up with a jerk in front of the small station building, leaped out and ran inside, leaving Joblots staring in dismay at the reins which had been tossed into his lap, as if he hadn’t the least idea what he was to do with them.
Presently he laid them cautiously on the seat and slipped quietly out of the buggy. Luckily one of the natives lounging by the door, took it upon himself to tie the horse to a hitching post, or there is no telling how McCormick would have managed to return the rig intact.
Percy Joblots, safe from the perilous position alone in the buggy, drew a quick breath and hastily followed Archie into the building. He found him at the window in the act of handing a telegraph message to the station agent, but the latter had read it aloud to verify it so quickly that it was all over before the dapper little fellow could sidle quietly within hearing distance.
“Will you please send it off at once?” McCormick asked, handing the man a dollar bill. “Just keep the change for your trouble.”
The fellow’s eyes brightened instantly, and he lost much of his languid, indifferent manner.
“Yes, sir,” he returned promptly. “If I can get an open wire, I’ll push it right along.”
He dropped down in his chair and the sharp click-click of the instrument sounded through the office.
“It’s all right,” the man said, as he looked up. “She’s gone.”
“How long will it take for an answer to come back?” McCormick asked eagerly.
“All depends. Couple of hours, anyhow.”
The Yale man frowned. Two hours seemed a long time to wait, but there was no help for it. As he turned away from the window, his eyes fell upon the dapper Joblots standing quietly beside him.
“Humph!” he exclaimed in surprise. “What are you doing here? Where’d you leave the horse?”
Percy gasped.
“Thaketh alive! Outthide, of courthe. You thouldn’t have left me alone with him. I never could thand hortheth.”
“Idiot!” growled McCormick, rushing to the door.
He gave an exclamation of relief as he saw the animal safely tied, and then turned back to Joblots.
“You’ve got about an hour to wait for your train,” he said shortly. “I’m going for a walk, so I’ll say good-by to you now.”
The little fellow seemed reluctant to part company with the Yale man, but Archie had reached the point when very little more of the other’s company would drive him distracted, so he made short work of the parting and hurried out of the station to the street and thence for a tramp along the country road.
His astonishment can better be imagined than described when, returning a couple of hours later, the first thing which greeted his eyes as he pushed open the station door was the familiar form of the little pest he fancied he was rid of for good, sitting complacently on one of the benches.
Joblots smiled quite happily into the frowning countenance of the Yale man.
“Tho glad you’re back,” he lisped. “Motht annoying thing! I actually mithed the beathtly train. I went acroth the stweet to thee if I couldn’t find thome thigaretth, and while I wath talking to the man—motht amuthing perthon, he wath—the bally thing came in and I never thaw it.”
“I never heard of such a fool trick!” snapped McCormick. “Now you’ve got to wait till after one.”
“Yeth,” Percy sighed, “and not a thingle plathe to get a bite to eat.”
“Well, that’s your fault,” Archie said callously. “You’ll have to go without.”
Walking over to the window, he found that the answer to his message had not yet arrived. Consequently he had to put in another half hour in listening to Percy’s idiotic prattle before the agent called to him that the telegram had come.
McCormick sprang up eagerly and snatched the yellow sheet from the man’s hand. His eyes eagerly scanned the contents of the rather long communication and, when he had read it all, they lighted up joyfully.
“I was right,” he muttered under his breath. “I knew it must be so. Now if I can only work it right. Gee! I can hardly wait to get back to the house.”
He hurried to the door, calling a brief good-by to Percy as he passed that amazed person, leaped into the buggy outside, and a moment later the clatter of the flying horse’s hoofs died away down the village street.
He made good time back to Cobmore’s, drove the horse into the stable and left him to the care of the hired man. Then he darted into the woods, found the path and fairly flew along it.
His face was flushed and his eyes shining with eagerness as he hurried along. Everything was coming his way now, if he only used a few precautions.
As he came out of the woods within sight of the farmhouse, he stopped abruptly and looked sharply at the building.
“Who in thunder’s that?” he muttered.
Close against the side of the house, beside one of the windows, was a man, tall, thin, and dressed in frayed, black garments. His back was toward McCormick, and he seemed to be intent on something which he was watching through a crack in the closed blind.
As Archie watched him, not knowing quite what to do, the fellow suddenly turned and saw him. The next instant his flying coat tails were vanishing around the corner of the house.
“Must be a tramp,” the Yale man murmured uneasily.
He did not like the thought of any one spying around that house, particularly around that room. There was entirely too much at stake.
Crossing the field, he reached the front of the house. The door was closed and apparently locked. The big armchair on the veranda puzzled him for a moment, but he swiftly forgot that and everything else as his eyes fell on the partly open window near at hand.
He drew his breath sharply and his face paled.
“By heavens!” he exclaimed. “Somebody’s broken in!”
The next moment he was on the veranda and had slipped through the window. A sound came from the dining room on the other side of the hall which made him stiffen like a hound on the scent.
Three strides took him past the stairs and into the sitting room. A second later he stood in the doorway of the dining room. He was just in time.
The slab had been removed from the hearth, and before the opening knelt Andrew Jellison. Near him was a large suit case, and he was busily engaged in lifting the packages of bank notes from the hole and stowing them away in the case. He was so absorbed in what he was doing that he did not hear the soft approach of the Yale man, nor see him pause in the doorway.
“Caught with the goods, Jellison!” McCormick said, in a tone of triumph.
“You pretty near turned the trick, but not quite.”
Andrew Jellison jerked up his head swiftly and drew his breath with a quick, sharp intake. His face turned the color of chalk, the package of bank notes dropped from his limp hand into the hole, and for an instant he gazed at the Yale man with a kind of horror-stricken fascination.
Then he leaped to his feet.
“Pretty clever, but not quite clever enough,” McCormick went on. “You didn’t know I heard you steal downstairs last night and followed you. You didn’t see me standing behind this very door while you opened up your hiding place to make sure the stolen money was still there. But I was here, Jellison. I watched you put that slab back and slip upstairs again. I even waited a full half hour, though it was the hardest thing I ever did, so that you might have time to go to sleep, before I went to find what you had hidden here. It must have worried you a lot, Jellison, to have to leave it here two years and never have a chance to see whether any one had found it or not.”
The Yale man paused and gazed with brightly gleaming eyes at the sullen face of the man before him.
“How do you think I felt, Jellison,” McCormick went on swiftly, “when I saw the label on the wrappers around those notes? The Metropolis Bank, of New York, Harlem Branch. Your bank, Jellison, and—my brother’s!”
The black-browed man gave a sudden start, and a look of amazed incredulity leaped into his eyes.
“Yes, my brother’s,” Archie repeated. “You didn’t know that I was a brother of the man you ruined and sent to prison, did you? You didn’t know that I had sworn to ferret out the man who was responsible for his disgrace and bring him to justice, if it took all my life. You played your cards cleverly. The evidence you faked deceived even the judge who tried the case. You didn’t neglect a single step to throw the blame from your guilty shoulders to those of an innocent man. I wonder if you’ve ever thought since then about that life you ruined, that reputation you blackened beyond repair. But, thank God, I’ve found you out! All your devilish plotting has come to nothing. Jim will be cleared, and you’ll have a taste of Sing Sing yourself. I hope you’ll like it.”
McCormick’s face was hard and relentless. He loved his older brother better than any one else in the world. The sight of Jim’s agony and disgrace had made him suffer torments. The man’s life had been almost ruined by the fiendish ingenuity of Andrew Jellison.
Released from prison some six months before, Jim McCormick had done his best to live a new life, but the stigma of the ex-convict clung to him wherever he went. No one would trust him. He drifted from place to place, always dropping lower in the social scale, until at last Dick Merriwell had found him and, learning his story, sent him to his brother Frank, in the hopes that the latter might do something toward clearing his name and finding out the real criminal.
It was small wonder, therefore, that Archie felt a bitter, relentless hatred for the man before him and was determined to mete out to him a full measure of justice.
Jellison seemed to read this in the clear, cold eyes of the younger man. He was in a desperate position from which there seemed no possible escape. Unconsciously he drew one hand across his sweat-stained forehead.
“I suppose you wonder why I didn’t nab you this morning,” Archie continued presently. “I wasn’t sure of you. I didn’t know your first name nor what you looked like. I couldn’t afford to make any mistake, so I went to Middleberry and wired my brother for a full description. It came all right, and I was the happiest fellow alive.”
The bank cashier moistened his dry lips.
“I wonder you said nothing to your friends,” he said, in a voice which held a ring of attempted bravado. “They would have kept me here. How did you know I wouldn’t get away before you came back?”
His eyes glittered strangely as he watched the Yale man with an eager, furtive look. Something more than mere curiosity seemed to be beneath the question.
“You wouldn’t leave without the coin,” Archie answered. “There’s no way out of here but by the path through the woods, and I was sure you couldn’t make it before I got back from the village. Besides, I asked Merriwell to get you out shooting with them this morning so as to prevent your doing anything while I was gone. I didn’t tell the boys about it because I wanted to clear Jim myself. I didn’t want anybody else to have a hand in it, and they haven’t. No one else knows yet, Jellison; but they will mighty quick.”
“I think not!” snarled the older man ferociously.
With a lightninglike motion of his arm, his right hand slid into a hip pocket and flashed out again, gripping a very serviceable-looking revolver.
“I think not!” he repeated triumphantly.
McCormick’s face paled a little as he gazed straight into the steady barrel of the weapon. But, though his face remained unmoved, his heart sank within him. What an idiot he had been not to prepare for this! Somehow, the idea that Jellison would be armed had never entered his head. He was so much superior, physically, to the older man that his ability to capture him had seemed a thing beyond question.
“You fool!” sneered Jellison. “Did you think I’d let myself be pinched by a kid like you?”
Archie smiled rather wryly.
“I was careless, I admit,” he acknowledged. “But I don’t see that you’re out of the woods yet. What are you going to do about it, now that you have got the drop on me?”
Jellison did not answer at once. As he stood thinking, a little of the triumph died out of his face and his forehead crinkled with a network of worried wrinkles.
What was he going to do about it? He might get away himself—might even carry off the money; but would he get far? McCormick knew the truth, and, though the cashier might tie him up long enough to get a good start, the fellow would be released the instant his friends came back from their shooting, and the whole lot of them would be on his trail like a pack of hounds.
Even if he did manage to get out of the country, what could he do then? The arm of the law was long. It would reach out inexorably after him over land and sea. He would be hounded from place to place, never resting, never secure, always knowing that he was followed, feeling sure that in the end tireless, never sleeping justice would find him out.
It was maddening. To think that all his carefully laid plans should be thwarted by a mere boy! He had waited so many weary months for this moment only to have his triumph turn to dust and ashes in his mouth. Everything had gone so smoothly, too, from the very first. No one had suspected him for an instant. He had played his cards too well. The only stumbling block had been the sudden, unexpected turning against him of old Hickey. That had worried him intensely, but now Hickey was dead, and he had anticipated no further difficulty. To have the whole carefully reared edifice topple about his head like a ruined house of cards nearly drove him mad.
His mind flashed swiftly on into the future. He saw the grip of the law closing about him inexorably. He would be captured, tried, sentenced. He would be a convict, walled into that hideous gray prison up the river, known only by a number, forced to do menial tasks.
And what of his wife—the only human being in the world that he cared for, besides himself. What would she do? Cling to him? Help and comfort him, and buoy up his broken spirits? Visit him in his cell and wait faithfully for his release? No! Marion was not that sort. She would be furiously angry—hysterical, no doubt. She would bitterly bewail the moment when she first set eyes on him. Her love for him would turn to hate, and he would never see her again.
He writhed inwardly at the thought. He could not stand it—he would not. He glared ferociously at McCormick. But for this fool who had accidentally stumbled upon his secret he would be safe. No one would suspect in a thousand years.
A sudden thought came into his mind, making even his callous nature shrink. He thrust it from him, but it returned again and again, whispering insidiously that it was the only way out.
He stole a stealthy glance at the youth before him. It would be possible. Only one life stood between him and utter ruin. He had an instinctive horror of staining his hands with blood, but what other course was there left him? With this fellow out of the way, he could hold up his head once more—could go his way through the world, apparently without a stigma.
It would be simple, too. He could manage it without suspicion falling upon him, if he used ordinary care. He had heard enough to know that McCormick was not one of the original hunting party. The fellow had gone to Middleberry that morning on an errand which he had not explained to the others. If he did not return, they would not be surprised. They would think he had gone back to New Haven.
It would be easy enough to get him into the woods. He could force him to carry the suit case full of money. That would be natural enough. The fellow would not suspect any other motive. Jellison knew something of the wide extent of the forest thereabouts. A body might lie hidden there for years without any one finding it.
These and a hundred other thoughts flashed through his mind as he stood there silent. Archie wondered what the fellow was thinking about which kept him quiet so long. He was curious to know what step the man proposed taking to escape from the web in which he was involved.
Suddenly Jellison seemed to have made up his mind.
“Put the rest of those bills in the suit case,” he commanded, with a threatening motion of his revolver.
Archie hesitated an instant.
“Do what I tell you!” snapped Jellison. “I’m a desperate man, and I won’t answer for the consequences.”
Then McCormick obeyed him. He could not see just what the fellow was going to do. There was no chance at all for him to escape entirely. Dropping down on the floor, he hastily crammed the rest of the bank notes into the bag and then closed and locked it.
“Now take it up and walk ahead of me,” Jellison said, in an icy voice. “You’ve been so smart butting into my game that I’m going to get a little use out of you. March!”