Chapter XV: The Guile of Savage

In a flash the men behind stopped, too, and stood listening with straining ears. In the sudden stillness which seemed to have fallen over everything the lazy lapping of the sluggish river sounded as distinct and clear as if they stood on its very bank. Lefty found himself wondering whether Savage might not have stepped off into the water. Then, realizing the absurdity of such a thing, he felt Stillman’s hand drawing him to one side of the road.

There was a chance that Savage might have heard them and was stealing back to make sure. Instinctively they both drew still farther back against some alder bushes, hoping thus to escape discovery and the consequent ruin of their plans.

At length, however, as the silence continued, it became evident that the Westerner was making no such move. He had either remained where he had first stopped, or, exercising extreme caution, he had drawn away without their having the least suspicion in which direction he had gone.

“The gink has taken to the grass,” Stillman whispered, in a chagrined tone, his lips close to the southpaw’s ear. “Come ahead, slow and careful, now.”

Cautiously they crept forward, making not the least sound in the thick grass that bordered the road. Savage could not have been more than thirty feet ahead of them, but when they had made that distance there was no more sight or sound of him than there had been at the beginning. A few minutes later something square and shadowy loomed indistinctly on the left――something which their exploring fingers told them presently was the rough wall of a small frame building, weatherworn, and not too solidly made.

“Boathouse, I reckon,” Stillman muttered, after a momentary pause. “Thunder! If the man’s gone off in a boat it certainly puts us in Dutch, my son.”

“Perhaps he hasn’t gone,” Lefty suggested, in the same cautious whisper. “Maybe he’s inside.”

The words had scarcely passed his lips before a slight thud sounded from the other side of the building. It was followed by a scraping noise, then a splash which started both listeners, as if moved by the same thought, toward the nearest corner of the shack. Owing to the need for silence, no less than their ignorance of the lay of the land, it took a minute or so for them to reach a point overlooking the river. There they stopped abruptly, peering through the thin mist that floated above the water and seemed strangely to give a vaguely luminous touch to the shadowy scene.

A small boat, vigorously propelled by a single oarsman, was slipping out of sight through the mist. After it had disappeared the rhythmical splash of the oars came clearly back to the listeners’ ears.

“Thunder!” muttered the reporter. “He’s going across. I wish that――”

“If there’s another boat inside, we could follow him,” Locke broke in suddenly. “He can’t be going very far――look at the time he was back last night.”

“Come on,” hissed Stillman, moving swiftly along the front of the house. “Here’s the door. Now, let’s see if there’s anything doing.”

He entered hurriedly, followed by Lefty. A moment later the flash of a small pocket torch circled about the interior of the boathouse and then winked out again. The place was dingy and forlorn looking. The rotting floor was covered with dust save where a single boat had evidently rested. There was no other craft of any sort to be seen.

“Stung!” remarked Stillman briefly.

There was silence for a moment before he flashed the light on again. Lefty blinked a little as the glare struck his eyes. His forehead was puckered thoughtfully.

“I suppose we could come down here in the daytime,” he said, “and find out what sort of a place he goes to over there. There can’t be so many joints within a short distance where he could get booze that it would be much of a job to pick the right one.”

“It’s either that or get hold of a boat and be ready to follow him some other night,” the reporter returned. “Your plan would be easier. Anyhow, there’s nothing doing now but to go back and tell old Jack what we’ve run up against. He’s liable to be gone two or three hours, and I’m not going to hang around this hole all the evening for the good of a big stiff the club would be a whole lot better without. Kennedy makes me sick about this man, anyhow. Savage wouldn’t last two days with any other manager.”

Lefty promptly agreeing with him, they made a more thorough inspection of the shack without discovering anything helpful, then departed.

Back in the hotel, Kennedy listened to their story in noncommittal silence, but with an ominous tightening of the jaws which boded little good for the delinquent recruit. Later the manager was observed by several to take up a position in the lobby from which he could view both the main entrance and the stairs. He carried several newspapers, and nothing could induce him to move from the place.

At nine o’clock some of the fellows, stiff and weary from the day’s work, drifted to bed. Kennedy sat on. An hour later only the devotees of draw poker and one or two sleepy onlookers remained, but still the manager had not stirred. Eleven found him the sole occupant of the lobby.

The big clock over the desk indicated scarcely five minutes past the hour when a quick step sounded outside, and Savage entered. Without glancing to right or left, he walked briskly toward the stairs.

Kennedy was there ahead of him.

“Here, you!” he said sharply as he faced the busher. “What in thunder do you mean staying out to this hour? Where’ve you been?”

Savage flushed, and looked as if he longed to snap back, but didn’t quite dare.

“I went for a walk,” he retorted sullenly. “Got farther off than I thought――that’s all.”

“Humph!” grunted Kennedy skeptically. “A walk! It listens well!”

He stepped suddenly forward, and, catching a lapel of the busher’s coat in one hand, deliberately sniffed the fellow’s breath. To his surprise, he caught not the faintest odor of alcohol. He sniffed again; then, stepping back, surveyed Savage meditatively.

“Well, if you haven’t been pouring it down, you’ve brought it back in a bottle,” he said, in a tone which was almost disappointed.

Regardless of the man’s angry glare, he went through his clothes with as much cool deliberation as if Savage had been a wooden dummy in a tailor shop. The search was productive of nothing whatever in the shape of flask or bottle. The busher’s face wore an expression of satisfaction.

“Awful smart, ain’t you?” he sneered. “Maybe you’d like me to strip so’s you can be sure it ain’t under my clothes.”

Kennedy surveyed him coldly. “You beat it upstairs,” he ordered suddenly, “and don’t waste any time turning in.”

Left alone, the manager followed slowly, his face perplexed. He was perfectly sure that Savage had lied to him, yet he could not prove it. The feeling that he had been tricked by this busher from the tall timbers was extremely unpalatable to old Jack, and kept him awake long after he had tumbled into bed.

It thus happened that when a thin trickle of smoke curled in at his transom he had only begun to doze off. The pungent tang of it in his nostrils brought him out of bed in a single leap. In another second, yanking open the door into the hall, he saw by the light of a flaring gas jet that the smoke came through the transom of the room next his own――the room occupied by Nelson Savage.

Fortunately most of the locks in the old Holcombe House were not noted for any great strength. A single surging blow of the manager’s wiry body sufficed to tear the screws of this one out of the tindery wood. The door burst open, letting Kennedy in with a rush.

The lights were going full blast. Still fully dressed, Savage lay across the bed, the blankets of which were smoldering briskly, giving out an ever-increasing volume of choking smoke. Scattered over the floor were several cigarette butts. Tucked under the unconscious man’s arm was a quart bottle, while the fumes of alcohol arose even above the smell of burning wool.

Kennedy seemed to take in these details even as he was leaping for the washstand. A deluge from the water pitcher instantly quenched the smoldering blanket, but Savage was too far gone to do more than grunt and hug his bottle tighter. An examination of the latter revealed less than two inches of cheap liquor remaining. The busher had apparently consumed the rest, for bits of tinfoil lying about showed the bottle to have been freshly opened.

With set jaw and angry eyes, Kennedy jerked the bottle from Savage’s unconscious grip, and hurled it through the open window. As he did so, he discovered, fastened to the bureau, a length of heavy cord sufficient to reach within a few feet of the ground.

“So that was how he worked it!” muttered the older man, his eyes fixed scornfully on the figure sprawling before him. “Left the string hanging down, an’ tied the bottle to it before coming in. Suffering snakes! If I didn’t have to have somebody besides Lefty and that kid Temple to pitch for the boys, you’d hike back to the sticks so fast you’d hit only the high places. Anyhow, your goose is done brown. It’s the can for yours the minute the old bunch shows up and get their soup bones into working order.”