CHAPTER XTHE WAY OF DEVLIN
Skippy felt Nickie’s hand on his arm and Timmy crowded up close to both of them. For a second there was no sound, then they heard someone move in the doorway and presently Barker’s voice pierced the darkness.
“What have you been whispering about in here, Timmy?” he demanded.
“Whisperin’?” Timmy’s voice trembled ever so little. “Aw, I was only tellin’ these guys how you got me outa the pen an’ they was tellin’ me how slick you helped them—that’s all.”
Skippy was certain that Barker sighed. In any event, he said, “Hmph! You better let them go to sleep and do your talking tomorrow!” He shut the door as swiftly as he had opened it—the key turned in the lock and all was silence.
Nickie was alert, tense. He nudged Skippy and Timmy and then he moved his lips. “Us three can cram into bed,” he said so softly that the boys had to strain their ears to hear. “We’ll pull a blanket over our heads so’s we can talk—see? It’ll be hot, but we should worry, hah?”
Skippy was worried, but he didn’t say so for he, too, was anxious to learn from Timmy what lay behind Barker’s grave, almost brooding exterior. He undressed and hopped in on one side of Timmy while Nickie crawled in on the other and if they felt stifled as they whispered under the blanket for three-quarters of an hour or more, they were not aware of it, so intensely interesting was the story to which they were listening.
“Where do I come from?” Timmy repeated in answer to Skippy’s question. “Albany. Barker comes in the jug where I’m doin’ five years—for stealin’. Well, he looks like a minister an’ I think he passes it out that he is one. Anyway, he spies me an’ gets talkin’ kinda religious an’ fatherly while the guard’s around. When the bloke strolls off, Barker quick drops the fatherly act an’ wants to know would I like to crash. Sure, I tells him. He tells me to be set the next night—that he’ll be waitin’. When he leaves he slips me fifty bucks an’ tells me to slip it to the guard I think’ll look the other way for that much jack.”
“You made it, huh?” Skippy asked.
“Easy. Fifty bucks is big money for them guards. The one I stake lets me slip without no trouble at all. Barker was waitin’ outside in a big closed car.”
“Frost with him?” Skippy asked curiously.
“Nope. I never seen that grinnin’ skunk till Barker brings me down to this hole. That’s a month an’ a half ago. Barker took me straight to a house in Albany where he said he rented a room. On the way he tells me that from then on I should say I’m his son. So I do. We only stay in the house three days. I’m willin’ to keep under cover so he tells the landlady an’ everybody I ain’t feelin’ so well, that’s the reason I don’t go out. Barker steps out plenty an’ I hear him talkin’ to the landlady down the hall.”
“What’d they talk about?” Skippy asked.
“Sure—it was nothin’ much. A lotta boloney! Barker makes the dame think he’s one grand old man—all for his wild son—all that bunk. Anyways, the last day we’re there he drags me out right after dark. Takes me to a doctor. When I ast him what for, he says that’s his business; that I should act like a sulky son. Well, I do it. The doc gimme the up an’ down an’ says O. K. So we go back to the house an’ the landlady hands Barker a telegram that I found out afterward was from Frost. It says somethin’ about grandma bein’ sick; that he should come home to New York. It was signed Joe.”
“Then you packed up an’ come here, I bet,” Skippy said.
“Sure,” Timmy murmured. “He leaves the telegram on the bureau an’ down in the hall he gives the landlady a coupla weeks’ rent. Tells her if we ain’t back by then, he’ll send the dough every week till we do get back. He give her a song and dance bout wantin’ a farm when he come back an’ that he wanted the room to come back to so’s he’d have a place while he was lookin’. When we come away he tells me it’s a lotta boloney he give her; that he only wanted the room till this little business broke O. K. He says he ain’t got no idea of goin’ back there.”
“Mm,” said Nickie, “sounds like he was buildin’ an alibi for hisself, hah?”
“That’s what I gets thinkin’,” Timmy admitted. “Anyways, we ride all night an’ plenty next mornin’ till we hit a woods in the mountains where Barker parked his car way in the trees. We slep’ there all afternoon, then start ridin’ again when the sun was goin’ down. Bout nine or so we come here. Frost’s here. So’s two kids bout our age—Willie Meehan, an’ Sammie Brown. Next day we get comparin’ things—Willie comes from Boston an’ Sammie from Syracuse. They crashed jugs like me, with Barker’s help. What’s more they all stayed in a city room a coupla days like me an’ just before they leave a telegram comes tellin’ Barker he’s gotta hustle to New York on business or that old stuff bout his dying grandmother. Anyways it’s Frost that always sends ’em.”
“An’ those kids,” Skippy asked eagerly, “did they say they were Barker’s sons an’ go to a doctor like you?”
“Sure. It’s the same old line—he’ll do the same with you guys too. Blamed if I know his racket, but when I’m here about a week, Willie says Barker’s sendin’ him west that night. Willie’s here a little over a month then. Seems he don’t keep kids much longer’n that—I’m overdue now!” He laughed grimly. “Anyways, he beats it with Willie an’ we was glad he was gettin’ a break an’ on his way. So two days after Barker comes back—it’s at night like he always comes an’ goes an’ Sammy an’ me’s sleepin’ in this room. Frost and Barker think we’re dead’s doornails so when they come upstairs they get arguin’ an’ forget how loud they talk. Well, I’m awake and how! I hear the whole works.”
“Gee!” Skippy breathed, happy in the thought that now perhaps he would learn something of value to Mr. Conne, when he should be so fortunate as to see the detective again.
“Yeah, I said a lotta things like that when I was listening,” Timmy confided. “I heard Barker say somethin’ about that Willie wouldn’t go through. So Frost asks him what he did then. Barker says he had to do the job hisself. Frost laughs when he hears that. He tells Devlin he better plan his jobs better if he don’t wanta take the hot squat.”
“Devlin?” Skippy asked breathlessly.
“Yeah, I forgot to tell—Barker’s an alias. Devlin’s his right moniker. I found it out when I was here two days.”
“So Frost told him he might burn?” Nickie asked, as if he was turning this odd warning over in his mind. “And that’s what makes you think Barker’s a killer—’cause Frost cracked that?”
“Yeah—sure. What else? Sammy promised he’d try an’ get word back to me somehow so’s to lemme know what job Barker wanted him to do, but he knew an’ I knew it couldn’t be done. Barker’d most likely send him too far away afterward. He went a coupla weeks ago. I been alone since, wonderin’ an’ worryin’ when my turn’d come an’ what it’d be!” Timmy took a deep breath and almost sobbed. “If it’s a killin’ job—I ain’t goin’ through. I ain’t gonna pull no trigger on nobody for Barker or nobody else!”
“Me, neither!” Nickie asserted flatly. “Looks like Barker springs us ’cause it’s easier than springin’ older guys in the big house. Then he gets us for a job an’ if anybody’s grabbed it’ll be us ’cause the law figures us future criminals anyway—see? Ten to one he dopes it we won’t squeal ’cause he’s did us a favor.”
“Just whatIthink!” Timmy agreed.
Not having the lawless squint upon such matters, Skippy did not know what to think. His active mind was full of plausible answers to the problem, yet somehow he could find no convincing explanation as to Devlin’s real motive. Why did the man, in each case, hire a room and have the boy pose as his son? Why was each boy required to go with him to a physician? There seemed no answer to those questions. Particularly was he puzzled as to why Devlin should accord them all this prisoner-like treatment while they were awaiting release.
He got nowhere along this line. He always ended by asking himself the question: was Devlin as grim of soul as he was of features? Some inner voice was ever prompt in answering this query of his and it was always the same.
Yes!