Sometime in the night Vaniman awoke, not suddenly, or with the sense of having been disturbed, but torpidly, with the feeling that he had been especially deep in slumber. He recovered his senses slowly. Therefore, only gradually did he become aware of a peculiar new condition of affairs in the camp. He wondered idly, trying to make up his mind as to what was different in the place this night. He heard the “yeak-yeak” of the crickets outside. He heard nothing else. Then he understood. His three comrades were not vocalizing their slumber in snores. He had endured the torture philosophically night after night.
His surprise awakened him fully. He listened, but he could not hear the sound of breathing. He rolled out of his bunk and investigated. The light in the camp was merely the reflection of the paler hue of the night outside, filtering through the open door and the single window. But he perceived that he was alone in the place—the bunks were empty.
His primitive life in the camp had inured him to new habits; he had been removing only his shoes and his coat when he went to bed. He pulled on his shoes—he did not bother with coat or hat. He rushed out of doors and called aloud, hoping that his panic was exaggerating his apprehensions. There was no answer.
Then his fears took definite shape and sought for confirmation. He ran to the horse hovel. The animal was gone.
Standing there, bitterly conscious of what had happened and acutely aware of what was likely to happen with those three miscreants on the trail of the treasure that they coveted, Vaniman accepted his full measure of responsibility. He did not excuse the passion which had prompted him to open his heart in regard to Tasper Britt. It was plain that they intended to unlock the secret of the money by the use of Britt, going to any lengths of brutality the occasion might demand. To get at Britt they would be obliged to invade the Harnden home. The thought of what might develop from that sortie wrought havoc in Vaniman's soul! His fears for Vona and her mother spurred him to action even more effectively than his conviction that his own cause was lost if the men were able to force the money from Britt. If they were captured it would be like them to incriminate Vaniman as an accomplice; if they got safely away with the treasure there could be no revelations regarding Britt's complicity in its concealment. Britt certainly would not tell the truth about what had happened to him; the fugitives would hide their secret and their plunder.
If ever a victim of devilish circumstances had a compelling reason to play the game, single-handed and to the full limit of desperation, so Vaniman told himself, he was the man.
He ran from the hovel to the peak of the crag that overlooked the village of Egypt. He beheld below him a vast expanse of grayish white, the fleecy sea of the enshrouding vapor. He heard no sounds, he saw no lights. He had no notion of the hour. Wagg had accommodated him with the time of day, when he asked for it, just as Wagg loaned him a razor and doled his rations, persistently and with cunning malice working to subdue the young man's sense of independence.
But in this crisis all of Vaniman's courage broke from the thralls in which prison intimidation and a fugitive's caution and despair had bound it during the months of his disgrace.
No matter how long the others had been on their way! They would be obliged to go the long route around the hill, and were hampered by the van; their grim forethought in taking the vehicle to transport their booty, as if they were sure of succeeding, was another element that wrought upon Vaniman's temper.
As he was, without coat or hat, he leaped from the crag, as if he were trying to jump squarely into the middle of the village of Egypt. He had taken no thought of the steepness of the slope or the dangers of descent. He slipped and rolled for many rods and a rain of rocks and earth followed him and beat upon him when he caught a tree and clung to it. He went on more cautiously after that; blood trickled from the wounds on his face where the sharp edges of rocks had cut. He thrust himself through the scrub growth, opening a way with the motions of a swimmer, his hands scarred by the tangled branches. There were other steep places that were broken by terraces. When he was down from the rocky heights on which the vapor did not extend and had entered the confusing mists, he was obliged to go more slowly still, for he narrowly missed some nasty falls.
Fierce impatience roweled him. He would not allow himself to weaken his determination by thinking on what he would do after he arrived at the Harnden home. He had set that as his goal. Above other considerations he placed his frenzied resolution to protect Vona. He realized that he must protect her even from himself—from the shock she would suffer by his unprefaced appearance, this lover who would come like one risen from the dead! The scoundrels who came seeking Britt in her home would not be as terrifying as the visitor who would seem to be a specter—the shade of the convict whom a mountain had crushed, so said the official reports of the tragic affair.
The fact that he was rushing to meet in combat three men, armed and desperate, worried him less than his anguished concern in behalf of the girl who was unprepared for his advent by hint or warning.
At last he came to the pasture slopes where he was more sure of his footing. He ran. When he heard the rumble of wheels he stopped in order to listen, trying to distinguish the location of the sound in the fog, which made direction uncertain. He knew it must be late. Few vehicles were moved in Egypt after dark. He suspected that what he heard was the van.
However, he was puzzled by what he was hearing. Either there were many vehicles, or else the echoes were playing pranks in the mists which enwrapped all objects. Under the pall of fog all sounds were exaggerated. To right and left, near at hand and far away he heard the rumble of wheels, the creak of whiffletrees, and the plodding feet of animals.
He heard, too, an occasional, dust-choked bleat or a plaintive lowing.
But a sound that was repeated regularly he could not understand, nor could he determine the direction from which it came. It was sound diffused like the fog itself. It was mellowed by distance. He recognized the notes as the winding of some sort of a horn or trump.
Vaniman's ears were telling him nothing definite. He hurried on down the hill so that he might make his eyes serve him at closer range. In order to see what was going on in the highway he was obliged to go close to the wall which bordered it; though the fog hindered, it helped, for in the obscurity he was well hidden among the bushes.
First he saw a hayrack go past. Two horses drew it. It was piled high with household goods, and women and children were on top of the load. Two cows were hitched on behind. By the time the fog had hidden this conveyance a wagon of the jigger type rumbled past. It was as heavily loaded as the hayrack. He heard other vehicles coming—he heard still others far down the road on their way.
He was urged by a furious desire to shout—to ask what all this meant. But he did not dare to run such risks. There was a wall between him and the rest of humanity until his sorry affairs could be straightened.
The highway gave him a clew as to his whereabouts; he had been lost in that wallow of vapor, unable to distinguish north from south. He retreated from the wall and stooped as he ran along behind the screen of the wayside alders. He had an affair of his own to look after, no matter what the rest of Egypt was doing.
In spite of his haste, he carefully scrutinized each item in this singular parade of the night, keeping near enough to the road for that purpose. It seemed like some sort of a migration. He wondered how comprehensive it was. He wanted to be sure that nobody in whom he was especially interested passed him without his knowledge. There was every kind of an equipage that would convey people or property. Nobody was talking. So far as was possible, the human beings in the procession seemed to be trying to make a secret of the affair. Mothers hushed their children when the youngsters chattered or whimpered. Men merely whispered commands to the horses.
All at once Vaniman beheld the van. It was holding a place in the parade and was moving with the decorous slowness of the other vehicles. On the driver's seat with Wagg were the two convicts. The comrade whom they had deserted waited until it had passed; then he ran out into the road and ducked along close to the rear of it.
They were coming away from the village of Egypt. To what extent had they succeeded in their rascally errand? What burden were they conveying? Vaniman could not curb his wild desire to find out. He had had plenty of experience in dodging into that van. He lifted the flap and leaped in. There was black darkness in there. He put out his hand cautiously. It touched a man. The move that the man made was a sort of fruitless struggle, indicating that his limbs were secured in some way.
Vaniman, in that crisis in his affairs, was not affected by squeamishness. He used his hands. He immediately discovered that the man was tied up hand and foot with torn cloth, strips of sheets or something of the kind. The man's only apparel was a nightshirt. Around his neck, so Vaniman's touch told him, was a leather cord to which keys were attached. Tasper Britt had told his cashier that he always carried his keys to bed with him in that fashion, and he had advised Vaniman to employ the same caution.
This prisoner in the van was certainly the magnate of Egypt. Vaniman found that a towel was bound tightly across the bearded mouth; the young man even ran his hand over the bald pate, now divested of its toupee.
There was no gold in the van. Vaniman made sure of that after he had satisfied himself as to the identity of Britt.
While the young man was endeavoring to steady his whirling thoughts, striving to plan some course of action by which he could turn the situation to his personal benefit, his attention became taken up in another quarter. Through the trap he heard the voice of the short man. “Quick! Off the road. Nobody's in sight!”
The van lurched and the front of it dipped with a violence that drove Vaniman and Britt against the end. Up came the front and the rear sagged. Then the van went bumping and swaying over uneven ground. The claw-clash of the branches of trees against the sides informed Vaniman that the men had driven into the woods.
When the vehicle halted, the young man crawled forward and huddled down into as compact a ball as he could make of himself.
He heard the three men dismounting. “I'll tell the world that this is a handy night for us, whatever it is that's going on in this burg!” It was the voice of that ever-ready spokesman, the short man. “There would have been a head at every window if we had been obliged to go teaming around all by ourselves, in the night. But they wouldn't have noticed a couple of giraffes and a hippopotamus in that procession.”
“I couldn't see that they even paid any attention to those women squalling upstairs when we did the job,” was the tall man's opinion. “Handy night, say you? Why, that man we braced up to and asked where was Britt's boarding house, he seemed to have so much of his own business on his mind that he wasn't wondering a mite what our business with Britt might be.”
“Get busy!” said the other convict. “That business is only just beginning.”
There was a stir of feet.
“Hold on!” It was the voice of Wagg, mumbling cautiously. “Tie your handkerchiefs over your faces like I'm doing.”
“Right!” the short man agreed. “Always leave 'em guessing when you say good-by!”
A few moments later Wagg lifted the flap; Vaniman saw him outlined against the fog. The convicts reached in and pulled Britt out, and the flap was dropped.
“Look out!” the short man warned. “Loosen that towel only a little and hold your clutch on his gullet, bo! We're not any too far from that road, and we'll understand the good news if he'll only whisper it.”
After a few moments he went on. “Man, we've got you—got you foul! You know where that gold coin is. Shut up! No argument. You tell us where it is. Then you won't get hurt. If you don't tell us, youwillget hurt. Get busy with your mouth!”
In spite of his abhorrence at this method of extorting the truth, Vaniman was conscious of a feeling of comradeship with the three rapscallions at that moment. They were merely seeking loot. He was seeking the re-establishment of his honor and his love. He waited in the tense silence, straining every nerve to hear. No sound came to him. He wondered whether Britt, cowed, was whispering the information.
“Get busy, I tell you!”
Evidently the prisoner was obstinate.
Minute after minute the short man labored with the captive, the snarl in his insisting voice deepening into the diapason of malevolent threat.
But Britt said no word.
Vaniman, feeling that all the prospects of his life were at stake, decided to play a waiting game. In spite of their culpable motive, the men outside were serving as his aides in the crucial moment. They were demanding information which the usurer owed to the innocent.
“Oh, very well,” said the master of ceremonies. “We'll go on with the rest of the program, then. One of you bring that side lamp and light it. And help me get this towel tighter. He's going to try some squalling.”
Vaniman saw the flare of the lamp past the edge of the flap. He set his teeth and decided that he would not interfere. When he heard sounds which, muffled in the towel, were like the whines and grunts of a tortured animal, he stiffened his determination to await the issue.
“Now loosen the gag and let him talk! I reckon he has found something to say.”
Vaniman heard louder groans. But Britt gave out no information.
“Back with the talk-tickler! Hold it closer! The same foot! We've got a good start on that one.”
The man in the van felt his gorge rising, in spite of the fact that the victim was a relentless persecutor of others. The stifled accents of agony were dreadful.
After a time the short man spoke. Into three words he put the venom of a malice that would not be gainsaid. “Now, damn you!” His tone hinted at no regret for what had gone on before; it suggested that there was more to come; it was compelling demand that the captive should employ the respite that was offered.
Britt began to babble; there was a suggestion of partial mania in his tones. Vaniman could not understand what he was saying, but the sharp questions that were interjected by the manager of the affair—the queries that gimleted for additional information—suggested the line of confession that Britt was giving forth.
“Yes—in the bank! Where in the bank? . . . I heard that, but where? . . . In the basement, hey? Well, where in the basement? . . . Concrete block hey? . . . Come across! . . . Along here with that lamp, bo! . . . Exactly where is that block?”
Through Vaniman there flooded something that was almost a delirium of derring do. He did not know just what he would be able to perform—one against three. He did not dare to wait for any farther developments in the thing. He was possessed by the frantic fear that the knaves would use their information and beat him to the treasure. That the money was somewhere in the basement of Britt Block was enough for him at that juncture. He decided that the time for stealth was past. He would proclaim the news. He would tell his story. He would trust the case to the fair judgment of men.
He scrambled forward in the van and made a hasty survey of the situation. Britt was stretched on the ground. The two convicts were kneeling side by side, bending over their captive, and the short man was still plying Britt with questions. Their backs were toward the man in the van. Wagg was kneeling at Britt's feet, holding the carriage lamp, shielding the flare with a curved palm.
The posture of all three of them invited the attack that Vaniman instantly decided on. He could not hope that he would be offered a better opportunity.
He flung aside the flap, he leaped from the opening. Spreading his knees, he landed on the convicts, a knee on each back, and then he brought his hands toward each other with all his strength, cuffing their skulls together with a resounding crack. They fell across Britt. Vaniman was on his feet while Wagg was rising; the guard's slow mind was operating ineptly on his muscles. The young man felled Wagg with a vicious blow under the ear.
The convicts, knocked senseless, were on their faces, pinning Britt to the ground. The butts of the bulldog revolvers in their hip pockets were exposed. Vaniman snatched out the weapons. He aimed one of the revolvers at Wagg, who had struggled to his knees. “Your knife! Throw it to me! Quick!”
Under the menace of the gun Wagg obeyed.
The young man pocketed the guns for a moment. He rolled the reviving convicts off Britt and slashed the prisoner's bonds and tore the towel from his face. It was in his mind to force Britt to crawl into the van. He was regarding Britt as his chief witness and principal exhibit in the exposure he proposed to lay before the people of Egypt. In the back of Vaniman's head there may have been some sort of consideration for the man who had ruined him—scruples against leaving him with those renegades who had tortured him. However, the young man was conscious of the more compelling motive—to carry Britt along with him, to force Britt, before the eyes of men, to uncover the hiding place of the treasure.
He trained his guns on the three men, backing away from them in order to have them at a safe distance. Britt was on his knees. He was staring at Vaniman with unblinking eyes in which unmistakable mania was flaming. The attack on him in his bed that night, the blow that had stunned him so that the assailants might tie him up, the ride in the strange conveyance, the dreadful uncertainty of what it was all about—these matters had wrought cruelly upon the victim's wits. The torture by the flame had further unsettled his mind. And at that moment, coming down from the heavens, so it seemed, a dead man had appeared to him.
Britt's recent experience had rendered him incapable of surveying the thing from a normal viewpoint. He saw the man whom he had disgraced by plot and perjury, the man who was buried under tons of rock, so the state had officially reported, the man to whose return after seven years of punishment Britt had been looking forward with dread. He had slept more peacefully since that tragedy had been enacted at the prison. Britt was not admitting that this was a human being in the flesh. Already partially crazed by the manhandling from which he had suffered, he peered at this apparition, a mystic figure in the aura of the fog—the shade of Frank Vaniman, so his frantic belief insisted—and leaped up, screaming like a man who had gone stark, staring mad.
Before Vaniman had time to issue a command Britt ran away along the lane by which the van had entered the wood. He was an extraordinary figure in flight. His night robe fluttered behind as he ran. For the most part he hopped on one foot; he yelped with pain when he was obliged to set the blistered foot on the ground in order to recover his balance.
Vaniman did not stay to threaten the three men. He had their weapons and he did not fear them.
He ran after Britt.
Vaniman's first impulse was to overtake the fugitive. He wanted to have Britt in his grip, holding to him, forcing him to confess and restore.
But when Britt reached the highway and started in the direction of the village, saner second thought controlled the pursuer. Britt had become a self-operating proposition; Vaniman felt that, although sudden fright were spurring Britt, a fear more inherently characteristic was pulling the usurer on his race to the village—he had betrayed the hiding place of hard cash! He was rushing to protect it. By running to the treasure Britt would be betraying something of more moment to Vaniman than gold. The young man kept his distance, keeping the quarry in sight, running a few feet behind Britt in the fog.
In the mist the two were like the flitting figures of a fantasy. The road was still well filled with wains and pedestrians, following after those who had gone on ahead. The wains stopped; the pedestrians halted and gaped and gasped. Women cried out shrilly. Vaniman and Britt furnished an uncanny spectacle. The eyes which beheld them saw them only for an instant; the fog's curtain allowed each observer scant time to determine what these figures were. Britt, hairless, his face sickly white, his night gear fluttering, was as starkly bodeful as if he were newly risen from the grave, garbed in death's cerements. Vaniman's presence on the scene added to the terrifying illusion produced by Britt.
This pursuer had been officially proclaimed dead. They who beheld believed they saw a dead man. The face was smutched with blood. The eyes were wide and were set straight ahead. Vaniman was taking no chances on losing the man whom he was chasing.
After the first thrill of horror, wild curiosity stung the men of Egypt. They dropped the reins, those who were driving horses, and joined those who had turned in their tracks and were following the phantoms of the night.
In this fashion, with the rout and rabble behind and Vaniman close on his heels, Tasper Britt arrived at Britt Block—and even the statue in its niche seemed to goggle with amazed stare.
Britt did not stop to lift the loop of the leather thong over his head; with a fierce tug he broke the cord. He unlocked the door and rushed in.
After Vaniman followed, the men outside hesitated only momentarily. Their numbers gave them courage. They crowded into the corridor. Some of them were carrying the lanterns which they had used to light the way of the procession of carts.
Britt did not enter his office; he ran the length of the corridor and flung open the door which led to the basement. The pursuers kept on at the heels of Vaniman. But they took the precaution to allow the men with the lanterns to go ahead.
Britt went frantically at his work, paying no attention to anybody. In fact, he did not seem to realize that others were present. There was a heap of furnace wood in one corner of the basement; he began to heave that wood in all directions. One of the lanterns was smashed by a billet. The men in the place were obliged to dodge the flying sticks. Britt worked as if he were alone in the place. He talked to himself. “Demons are after it. Demons and dead men! The demons sha'n't have it. I told 'em where it was. But I'll take it away. The demons brought hell fire to make me tell. They brought a dead man. But they sha'n't have it.”
“He's gone raving crazy!” cried an onlooker in shrill tones.
“Come on, men! Let's catch him and tie him up,” suggested somebody else.
But they were prevented by fears which were made effective by influences which did not seem to partake wholly of human qualities.
In their concentrated interest in the active Britt they had been disregarding Vaniman, who was restraining himself, standing outside the radiance of the lanterns.
The next instant he leaped into the sight of all of them. He stood between them and Britt. He pulled his weapons. His blood-spotted face seemed a vision of the unreal; but the guns were unmistakably the agents which a human being would employ in an emergency. And there was a businesslike click in his tone. “Stand back, the whole of you! This is a show-down. Tasper Britt is confessing that he is a thief and a liar. Use your eyes.”
They cowered back from the threat of the guns and did use their eyes. They saw Britt uncover a section of the basement floor of concrete. They saw him locate an iron ring that was cunningly concealed under a little square of concrete which he pried up with his finger nails. He tugged at the ring and lifted a slab. The men with the lanterns raised them high. The light glinted on gold—gold coins in bulk, naked of sacks.
A man had come thrusting through the crowd in the basement, hurrying in from the outside. It was Squire Amos Hexter. It was hard to determine from his expression which spectacle he found the more astounding—Frank Vaniman at bay, in the flesh, or the gold coins that Tasper Britt was dipping with both hands, sluicing them upon the concrete in jingling showers.
Squire Hexter did find his voice. “Good God!” he shouted.
“God is good!” said Vaniman. He threw the weapons into a far corner of the basement. “Squire Hexter, take charge of this thing. Here are plenty of witnesses.”
The Squire went forward slowly. His lips moved without the sound of spoken word. He set the clutch of his hands on Vaniman's arms. He stared long and earnestly into the young man's eyes.
“I can't talk now,” Vaniman quavered.
And the Squire seemed to know, out of his sympathy with men, that there was something for that case better than words. He put his arms around Vaniman and kissed him. “Come along home with me to Xoa, sonny.”
Britt struggled to his feet, and groaned when his weight came on the tortured flesh. He looked about as if searching for something. “A basket!” he muttered. “I must find a basket.”
He started forward and saw Vaniman in the hook of the Squire's arm. Whether increase of his mania or some sort of remorse prompted his utterance was not clear. “Take it back to Tophet with you! I didn't mean to keep it. I didn't know how to give it back. I took it so that they'd pen you up, out from under my feet. But even a thousand tons of rock can't pen you. I'm done trying. If this is what you're chasing me for, take it! Keep away from me.”
He went through the crowd, beating his way with his fists.
“Shall we hold him, Squire?” called a man.
“Let him alone for just now! He can't go far in that shape. We'll attend to him after a little while.” The Squire pulled himself together with the air of one who saw that the situation needed a commander. He singled responsible men from the crowd and ordered them to take charge of the coin.
“Come away with me,” he urged Vaniman. “This is no place for our talk.”
When they walked out of the building they saw no sign of Britt. “We'll let him alone,” insisted the Squire. “There'll be no use in asking him questions till he's in his right mind. He'll probably get back his wits when he gets back his clothes.”
“Squire Hexter, what's happening in this town to-night. What—”
“All in good time, sonny! Let's get home where Xoa is.”
There were lights in the Squire's house. In spite of the fog, Vaniman perceived that there was a gray hint of dawn in the heavens. More acutely was he wondering what this universal vigil in Egypt signified. But reaction had overtaken him. He was in the mood to accept commands of any sort. He walked on in silence.
“You must stay out here till I break the thing to Xoa!”
The young man clung to the trellis of the porch for a few moments until Xoa flung wide the door. Supported in her embrace, he staggered into the sitting room.
“Cry, sonny! Cry a little,” the Squire adjured him. “Put your head on Xoa's knee and have it out. It will tide you over till your own mother can comfort you.”
But wild desire for knowledge burned the sudden tears out of Vaniman's eyes. “Where is Vona? What is happening?”
“We'll see to it mighty quick that Vona knows, sonny. The right word must get to her in the right way. Mother will know how. Mother, you'd better attend to it.”
She agreed with that suggestion, but first she brought a basin and water and soft cloths and solicitously made more presentable the young man's face.
While she ministered to him he told them what had been happening in his affairs.
“You're alive. That's the main point. Now, Xoa,” urged the Squire, “go to Vona before some lunatic tells her something to scare her to death!”
The good woman hastened away, her smile reassuring the lover.
For some time the Squire regarded Vaniman with an expression into which some of the old notary's whimsical humor began to creep. “So it struck you, did it, that you had dropped back into town on a lively night? I was expecting quite a general stir, myself. But I'll confess that the thing hit me as livelier than what I had looked for when I was sitting here and heard a man holler outside that your ghost had chased Tasper Britt into his office. You see, the plan was not to have Tasper disturbed by any human beings this night. We all hoped he would sleep sound. Everybody proposed to tiptoe when passing in the neighborhood of the Harnden house. But to have a ghost come and chase Tasper around town was wholly outside the calculations of the human beings in Egypt this night.”
“I'm afraid I don't see any joke hidden in this proposition, Squire,” the young man complained.
“Son, it's a joke, but it's so big and ironic that only one of those gods on high Olympus is big enough and broad-minded enough to be able to laugh at it. Some day the folks of this town will be able to look back on this night and laugh, I do hope. But not now. They're too much wrought up. They're too busy. Hold on! I'm going to let another man explain the thing. He's in a position to pass out information more to the point than anything I can hand you. I'll simply say this. When you saw what you beheld in the fog this night, you were seeing a revised version of the Book of Exodus acted out in real life. The Children of Israel, of this day and date, are departing from the land of Pharaoh, current edition. With their flocks and their possessions, their wives and their children, they are on their way to The Promised Land. And now, if you'll step into the parlor with me I'll introduce you to the promiser.”
Vaniman followed
There was a big man in the parlor, a hearty-looking man, manifestly of the metropolis, patently of the “good sport” type. He was walking up and down. With his tweed knickerbockers, his belted jacket, his diamonds in his scarf and on his fingers, he was such an odd figure in the homely surroundings that he produced on Vaniman a surprise effect. The young man surveyed the stranger with the interest one might take in a queer animal in a circus van; the big man's restless pacing suggested a caged creature. But he took not the least interest in Vaniman, an unkempt individual without a coat.
“Hexter, what did happen, anyway? I thought you were never coming back. I had a good mind to chase you up, though it would be poor judgment for me to show myself to-night.”
“This has happened!” The Squire pointed to Vaniman. The big man cocked an inquiring eyebrow, looking at the Squire's exhibit with indifference. “Colonel, this is Frank Vaniman. You know all about the case!”
The stranger stepped back so hastily that he knocked over a chair.
“Know about the case!” he bawled. “No, I don't know about it, either, if this is the man the mountain fell on—or whatever it was that happened. What kind of con is this you're giving me, Hexter?”
“This is the man, sir. What I mean by saying you know about the case is that you have agreed with me that an innocent man was railroaded into prison, after I gave you the facts. He is out through a trick worked by a prison guard. He'll give us the details later. Just now it's more important for you to be told that Tasper Britt, by his own acts, has confessed that he robbed the Egypt Trust Company.”
“Well, I'll be damnationed!” blurted the big man, with such whole-souled astonishment that the mode of expression was pardonable. “And I thought that plenty and enough was happening in this town for one night!”
“Frank, this is Colonel Norman Wincott. He has well understood your case from what I have told him. Now he will understand better. Colonel, won't you allow Frank's story to wait? He is in a dreadfully nervous state, poor chap. And I'm afraid he'll go crazy on our hands if he isn't enlightened right away about what is going on here to-night.”
Colonel Wincott strode across the room and slapped Vaniman cordially on the shoulder with one hand and pumphandled with the other. “Plenty of men have escaped from state prison. There's a special novelty about a story of that sort. But let me tell you that I'm the only man in the world who has ever put over a proposition such as this one that is on the docket right here and now. I don't blame you for being interested.” It was plain that the colonel entertained no mean opinion of himself and his projects. “All is, Vaniman, I hope your making a two-ring affair of it hasn't taken the attention of the folks off the main show.”
“It has only added to the general effect,” affirmed the Squire. “It's a clincher. Folks don't care now because Tasper Britt is awake. He has got plenty of business of his own to attend to without calling in sheriffs to slap on attachments.”
“Very good! The easier the better,” returned Colonel Wincott. “But when I hired you to look after the law part, Hexter, I reckoned you could counter every crack he made. Sit down, Vaniman!” He picked up the chair he had overturned and took it for himself. “You have seen the parade, some of it?”
“I saw a great deal of it, sir.”
“And you don't know where it's headed for?”
“No.”
The colonel leaned back and regarded the Squire with the satisfied contentment of a cat who had tucked away the last morsel of the canary. Then he winked at Vaniman. “Young man, did you ever hear of Wincott's Pure Rye?”
“No, sir.”
“Glad of it! Hope you never were familiar with any other brands. However, enough men did know about it in those dear, damp days beyond recall to make me independent of the pawnshop, to say the least. And, having cleaned up a good pot with whisky running down men's gullets, I reckoned I'd see what I could do with water running downhill. Do you get me at all so far?”
“No, sir.”
“Didn't suppose you would. I'm only shuffling the deck. Now for the deal! Awhile ago I came up into this state from the South and I bought the unorganized township that bounds this town on the north. It had gone begging for a buyer because it's mostly pond and water power. But it's what I wanted. And, having bought it, I used my check book and got some good lobbyists on the job and I got a conditional charter from the legislature. That is to say, it becomes a town charter automatically the moment I can report a certain number of inhabitants—not mere men, but families, regularly settled. Do you see?”
“I surely do begin to see, Colonel Wincott.”
“Vaniman, if I had gone to the cities and advertised for settlers, what kind would I have got? Probably only a bunch of aliens dissatisfied already; if they weren't sore on general conditions I couldn't coax 'em to move. And aliens are always moving. I wanted some of the old breed of Yankee pioneers. That's what my folks were, 'way back. I took a sly peek into the town of Egypt. Good folks, but no opportunities here. Everything gone to seed. Up in my township a new deal with a fresh deck! Plenty of timber, plenty of rich land—and mills going up. Confound it! I propose to be boss of a real town—not a wild land plantation!”
He suddenly shifted his posture. He came forward in his chair and set his elbows on his knees. “Say, Vaniman, I got Hexter's opinion a few days ago when I opened up to him and hired him to attend to the law. But I want to ask you now what you think of my real-estate agent?”
The young man shifted his bewildered gaze from the colonel's jovial and inquiring visage to the Squire's equally cheerful countenance.
“Known to Pharaoh and the modern Children of Israel as the Prophet Elias, Frank,” explained the notary. “I have heartily indorsed his good work. Furthermore, he knows well how to keep a secret and how to train others to keep one. Tasper Britt went to bed this night without one inkling of what was about to happen. He did not know that he was to be left here without men to toil and pay him his twelve per cent. He has town debts. He has the bare acres he has foreclosed on—he has the tumble-down houses. He has the paupers on the poor farm. He—”
“Hold on, Squire! I forgot about those paupers,” broke in the colonel. “I want a town that's fully rounded out. A few paupers belong in a town so that they may serve to remind others folks that they must keep busy and avoid the poor farm. And even the paupers will wake up and go to work in my town! Work will be in the air. I'm going to send a wagon after those paupers. Britt is no sort of a man to be allowed pets; he'll let 'em starve.”
“Undoubtedly,” agreed the Squire. “I'll say, further, Frank, that when the Prophet started off last evening, blowing his trump to sound the signal for the migration, Britt stood and saw him go—and never guessed what it meant.”
“I heard that horn—I wondered.”
“He's a good blower,” stated Colonel Wincott. “He blew all the props out from under the man Britt. Solidly grounded on texts, Elias is! Vaniman, a brand-new scheme needs a resourceful operator.” He patted the top of his head. “Pardon me for flattering myself. I invented the system and the Prophet played it.”
Then Colonel Wincott leaned back, stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his vest, and rocked on the hind legs of the chair. “I played a hunch,” he went on. “I was going through Scollay Square in Boston one evening and I heard a street evangelist holding forth. He was preaching on the subject, 'Bondage.' Sin he called Pharaoh. And he was hammering the hearers with texts from Exodus. The idea hit me. I hung up beside the curb till he was through preaching, then I invited him to take a ride with me in my car. And a wise old bird I found him to be! No hypocrite! Doing his best to help his fellow-men, but always hep! Never out of a city till I pulled him up here. Likes the country now. Going to be the regular preacher in my new town. No more robe-and-umbrella business, of course. That was my idea. I'm inclined to be a little circusy in my notions. He stood for it. The scheme helped him to put over what he couldn't have got away with by ordinary means.”
Vaniman remembered those flashes of worldly wisdom in the Prophet, and was enlightened. His countenance revealed his thoughts.
“Had you guessing?” demanded the colonel. “Nothing like starting folks to guessing. Keeps up the interest. One by one Elias snipped the cords that bound the folks to the soil of this place. Did a fine job. They're going to thrive after they are transplanted. Even Squire Hexter is going to bring up the rear guard, after he has finished here with the loose ends of the law needed in the case.”
“It's to be a clean sweep, Frank,” the Squire affirmed. “Even Usial and his press; the new town will be in his legislative class.” Then he looked long at Colonel Wincott, who was rocking on the legs of his chair.
“I know mighty well what you want to say to me, Squire Hexter,” stated the object of the regard. “You don't need to say a word, though. I'll do the saying. Vaniman, you have had a raw deal. But you'll soon be through the woods. I'm going to have a bank in my new town. You're going to be the boss of it.”
“Just a moment before you say anything, Frank,” expostulated the Squire when Vaniman, choking with doubts and gratitude both, attempted to speak. “I propose to start at once for the shire town. I'll begin with the county attorney. I'll have your name cleared inside of twenty-four hours.”
“And don't bother with any Dobbins for that job,” declared the colonel. “Use my car. My chauffeur is hiding it in the bush a little ways from here. And now, Vaniman, give me all your attention,” he went on, with the pride of a successful performer. “I'll tell you what's going to happen over across the line in my town. It's going to interest you. You have been a man of affairs and you can grasp what I'm saying.”
But Vaniman did not seem to be grasping even that introduction of the subject. He had heard hurrying footsteps outside the house.
“You'll never listen to anything that will stir your blood like what I'm going to tell you of my plans for the future,” insisted the colonel.
But a tremulous voice called: “Frank! Frank!”
Vaniman leaped from his chair and turned his back on the man who proposed to stir the blood of the listener.
Squire Hexter hurried to Colonel Wincott and whispered information which caused the master of The Promised Land to elevate his eyebrows understandingly.
“Great Caesar! Why, sure!” he blurted, and popped up out of his chair.
Following the Squire, he tiptoed to the door and stood on one side when the notary opened and peeped out.
“Vona!” called the Squire, gently. “The boy is in here. Come!”
She ran past them into the room.
Colonel Wincott ducked out and the Squire followed and closed the door. He closed it slowly, softly, reverently, and then turned a smiling face of compassionate understanding toward Xoa and the colonel.