CHAPTER XXVIGOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
They talked it all over before they went to sleep that night and concluded that one bright star of hope burned brightly in their favor. Everything indicated that Devlin meant to get them both off his hands at once. Nickie observed that perhaps Frost had put the idea in his head and, if so, they had much for which to thank him.
Skippy’s thoughts were full of Dick Hallam and he dared to think there might be some hope in that direction. Might not Hallam guess that Devlin was holding him prisoner somewhere in the locality? Might not Carlton Conne send out his men to scour the countryside until they trailed down the forgotten house that lay in the fastnesses of Devil’s Bog?
“He’s gotta!” Skippy said aloud.
“Hah?” Nickie asked sleepily.
“I was tellin’ myself that sump’n’s gotta come our way. That guy we passed—I know him. He’ll use his head that we must be some place nearby an’ he’ll have a hunt started for us.”
“Yeah, but we’re a coupla hours’ ride from where the sawbones lives.”
“It’s called Hillbriar—I seen it on a sign.”
“Yeah, and this place—Devil’s Bog! That’s a swell monicker all right. It’s the right place for Devlin all right. If thenwas out an’ theiput before thelthey could call him The Devil of Devil’s Bog, hah? Say, the more I think the worse headache I get about that doctor business. He ain’t in on Devlin’s racket, that’s a cinch. If only Devlin didn’t pack that rod, kid, we coulda spilled things. But he was watchin’ us close, the dirty rat.”
“Yeah, an’ I wasn’t gonna take no chance neither. Gee whiz, Nickie, we’re better off waitin’ ’cause it’s better bein’ alive than go off the handle an’ have maybe three of us dead. Then he coulda skipped out an’ nobody woulda heard a shot.”
“Yeah, we didn’t have no chance without gettin’ blowed up. Even in the car, that rat wasn’t missin’ no tricks. A coupla times I was gonna give you a sign, ’cause I thought between us, we could land on him, but he had that silencer right in his mitt. He ain’t got no feelin’s, he makes me thinka rock with icy water tricklin’ down it.”
“Did you notice anythin’ just before we come to the creek, Nickie? I mean when he stopped an’ got out with his flash?”
Nickie lifted himself up on his elbow. “Say,” he whispered, “them footsteps? Say, I was wonderin’ too. What was in there that he was so nosey about, hah?”
“Wish I knew, believe me. That path I betcha goes through the woods an’ down to that bog. He said, didn’t he, that the creek an’ the bog both wound round that way, huh? Anyway, it’s a cinch that he was down that path Saturday night. We seen mud on his feet an’ tonight we could see his footsteps.”
“Then it looks like he took Timmy for ...” Nickie whispered fearfully.
“I been thinkin’ the same thing. Gee whiz, Nickie, it’s awful, huh? He’s like you say—a devil! We gotta be pretty foxy with a feller like that. He ain’t afraida nothin’, I don’t think.”
“Yeah, an’ don’t think we can beat him to it. Lissen, kid, he’s twice our size an’ the gun he carries ain’t no water pistol. It looks like if he don’t get us one way, he’ll get us the other. Kid, the only way we’ll get a break is for your friends to round up the dicks an’ come down here and surprise Devlin. An’ how can that happen when they don’t know....”
“But maybe they will, Nickie,” Skippy whispered hopefully. “I didn’t know the name of this place when I wrote that note. Even I didn’t have a chance to hardly get it outa my shoe so I wouldn’t a’ had a chance....”
“An’ that old lady,” Nickie interposed ruefully. “Holy Smoke, kid, what a chance that was to slip her that note if Devlin hadn’t kep’ watchin’ every move. Just the kinda old lady we was talkin’ about too.”
“What you talkin’ about, Nickie, huh?”
“That note what you was gonna slip the first old lady you could—remember? An’ you’d a’ had a swell break if it wasn’t for Devlin. He’s a hoodoo with that funeral pan o’ his.”
“Gee whiz, Nickie, did I get away with it as swell as that? Gosh, I was scared skinny that maybe Devlin was wise I knocked her pocketbook outa her hand on purpose.Shedidn’t know I did it on purpose.”
“On purpose—how come?”
“Sure, I thought you knew it, Nickie. Gee whiz, was that a break that it opened up an’ her stuff ran all over the walk! When I give it back that note was inside.”
“Kid, that’s the pay-off! If that ain’t a break.”
“Well, I did an’ how! By now I bet she’s read that an’ maybe already she’s put it in an envelope an’ it’s on the way to New York.”
Skippy would not have been able to endure the anxiety of the following days if he had not had faith that the note was well on its way. Hope would soon have fled if he had known that the sweet-voiced old lady had not discovered the note that night, nor for many nights to come. She had gone home after her visit to the doctor and, being confined to her bed for the next two weeks with a bad cold, there had been no occasion to use her “best” pocketbook.
Devlin seemed destined to win.