The Street of the City (21 page)

“Well, I couldn’t help it, could I, if the old guy got sick and went to some hospital? I done my best to make things come out anyway, though, and I think you’ll find everything okay. The only thing I can’t figure out is how you’re going to get that there mic outta that there cellar. Why, they might discover it was there most any day now, especially when they go to clean the cellar. You know dames like that are apt to be pretty frisky about getting spic and span by spring.”

“It’s not the mic I’m worrying about,” said Granniss. “We could get another easy, but there are incriminating papers, maps, floor plans of defense plants, and other stuff there that we’ve got to have! An’ we’ve got to have ’em before the seventh!”

“I see. But how are you gonta get ’em out without wakin’ up the folks?” asked Mike perplexedly.

“You just leave that to me,” said the older man. “I’m figuring to wait till some dark night when there’s a lotta wind, mebbe even rain, and do a swift job of digging when we start, just tunnel under to that little closet in the cellar and tap the wall. Take out the stuff and the microphone and the recording machine and all and install it in the new shed we’re putting up back here. Doing that, we can go on using the same transmitter that we had before, and nobody the wiser. An’ if the folks in the house discover us working, well, they’re just women, and there are ways of handling them. I don’t intend to stop at anything.”

“You don’t say!” said Mike, looking speculatively across the starlight to the other man, secretly planning to leave any “rough stuff” to his partner in crime. “But how come they didn’t discover your arrangements when these folks took over the house?”

“Oh, we had that all camouflaged inside. Even if the cops had come into the cellar they couldn’t have found it. It was an extra bricked-in addition we built off the far end of the cellar behind the furnace, and it was so finished you couldn’t have found the opening unless you knew how. One loose brick that looked solid as Gibraltar and came out, and then behind a panel there was the keyhole. But even that you wouldn’t have recognized. It was just a sort of slit, and the key was thin as a knife blade. Oh, we had it all fixed up. It was great. And, of course, when nobody lived in this house we could come here any time and use it nearly all night without any danger of discovery.”

“So! That was the way it was!” said Mike thoughtfully to himself, laying up this knowledge for a time when it would be more lucrative to remember certain things than it now was to keep silent about them.

“Now Mike, stop right about there where you are and reach down with your fingers. See if you can strike any wires with your hand yet. I think you ought to have almost got it uncovered.”

Mike got down on his knees and worked away beside his prone shovel, running his hand down farther and father, bringing up handfuls of ashes and small stones.

“Yes,” he said, puffing softly with his exertions, “I think I got her. Two wires, ain’t there? Say? Am I liable to get a shock doin’ this?”

“No, no shock, not to amount to anything. Got the two wires you say? Okay. Then we’re safe. Now while we wait for the lumber, suppose you do a little quiet diggin’. Go slow, not too continuous, you know, else it might attract some dame’s attention. Get as far as you can while we wait and have some bushes and weeds ready to put it all under cover in case somebody should come by. Wait! What’s that sound? That isn’t a cop’s car, is it? Over there in the next street?”

“Naw, that there’s the ten o’clock bus. She stops at that corner for three minutes and then goes on. I got this neighborhood pretty well memorized. You know I don’t go into nothing like this without making sure I won’t get caught. But what I don’t understand is what you said the first day. You spoke about a powder plant, and I can’t just figure how these two things work together.”

“Oh, don’t you? Well, you’re not so foresighted as I thought you were. Don’t you see the easiest way would have been to put up a rough building, call it a powder plant, make a small output of the stuff, enough to throw anyone off the track and have only workmen who are wise to keep their mouths shut. Then we can use our radio all we please without exciting suspicion. That’s why I wanted to buy the place. That would have been the easiest way, besides giving us the look of being deep in defense work. And that’s what we will eventually do as soon as we can get entire possession. But in the meantime, this lumber can be brought in very slowly, a little at a time, until we have enough here to begin to build. Then we can bring our own men here, put up a rough shell in a hurry, and not attract attention. You see, it’s wisest to keep attention away from here as much as possible. After we get the shell of a building up, we can build a soundproof compartment out of sight. Of course if we could buy the house and put the people out of it at once, offer them a bonus or something to do till we get possession. But there are always ways to get people out if you offer enough money. I figure this ain’t any exception. Hey! What’s that? Steps.”

“That’s the young guy bringin’ his gal home. Just lie low. He don’t stay long after he comes. He works early somewheres. Guess I’ll sort of let up till he leaves.”

The big man settled down on the tool chest behind the group of bushes, and the two remained motionless for several minutes, while they watched the lights in the little brick house. Someone came into the kitchen and got a pitcher of water and a tray. They could hear the tinkle of glasses and the clink of pieces of ice. Then the kitchen light went out and there was another interval. But they did not have to wait long until they heard the front door open; voices, footsteps, and then they could hear the young man going down the walk.

“Okay!” said Mike at last in a cautious voice. “The young guy has gone. Now we can work again. It won’t be many minutes before all the lights go out and the house will be asleep.”

“Well, don’t take any chances!” warned the big man. “What time did you say that lumber would arrive?”

“He didn’t say what time exactly. He said he’d be along plenty late so we didn’t needta worry. What’s that?”

Footsteps! Footsteps! Quiet, steady, measured. A low word now and then stopping a moment, then passing slowly by.

“Sounds like cops!” murmured Mike.

“No brass buttons!” murmured Granniss.

The footsteps passed on, and the sound died away indefinably.

After a little Mike peered into the darkness after them.

“Where do you ’spose them two went? There ain’t none of them new houses occupied yet, is there?”

“How should I know? That’s your job. That’s what I hired you for.”

“Well, I guess I’m just getting jittery. I didn’t like the way they stopped walking, but there ain’t anyplace down that way where they could rightly go.”

He got up and straightened his stiff back, took a step or two out toward the street.

“Hi! There, come on back and get to work,” growled Granniss. “They went off toward the bridge. I’m almost sure I heard them cross the bridge. Don’t be a fool. You’ll have that lumber on top of your work before you know it, and we don’t want to stay here all night, you know.”

“Keep your shirt on, man! You don’t have to do a thing but sit still and see your orders carried out. And mind this, fella. I’m just as anxious to earn my money as you are to pay it, so pipe down and keep calm. And—there, I hear those footsteps going on now. They were most likely stoppin’ to talk a little before separatin’. One has gone on across the bridge, and the other has likely taken the dirt road where his footsteps wouldn’t sound. Now, let’s get back on the job. You want I should follow them wires now, back to the lean-to on the kitchen? Is that right?”

“Yes. Make it as deep as you can and then cover it over somehow. Little sticks across near together, covered with branches. Snow flung across it. Nobody walks across this place anyway. We’ve checked up on that in the past when we used the empty house.”

“Okay!”

Later there were steps in the distance, but the two men were intent on the trench they were constructing and paid little heed.

The night grew deeper, and the darkness more intense, with only the far, dim stars above in the blackness of midnight blue.

And then, at last, came noiseless wheels and a muffled engine, rolling down the incline of the back street almost imperceptibly, and Mike striding silently across the ruts of the field to stand in the road and wave and point out the stopping place.

Two dark figures slipped from the truck and approached the load, rubber shod, lifting a single board and following Mike into the field behind the brick house. Mike went like a cat across to the place he had just cleared and indicated just where this first board should be placed. It was all done without talk, the directions given by motions, the men all acting as if they had been trained in a school of silence. Just once a board slipped and went down with a thud, and the crew looked fearfully around and crouched near the ground out of sight. Then after an interval, the work went swiftly on till all the boards were neatly piled, low lying, and a few branches scattered over with some snow atop. It was a well camouflaged pile of lumber, and to all casual appearances had been there perhaps all winter. Only one very familiar with the scene would have noticed that the landscape was at all changed. Then the truck that brought them went away like a shadow into the darkness, and after a few minutes the two men slipped as silently away, Mike carrying the old tool chest on his brawny shoulder.

A few minutes later a cranny little upstart of a moon peered brightly out from behind a cloud and went on with its journey across the sky, flinging down a flash of silver to the ice-locked river to sail like a bright twin up its length to the west and disappear with it behind the mountains.

And then two silent figures detached themselves from two of the little new empty houses up across the street, went silently over to the late scene of activities behind the brick house, and carefully examined every inch of the way, bringing small pencils of light to flash a moment or two on the broken snow and branches covering the excavation and the pile of lumber. They nodded at one another, and then together stole away.

And in the little brick house the family slept secure, and the moon rose higher and smiled down on that street of the city that two young people had been talking about that evening as they looked down the silver way, till in her dreams Frannie almost thought she saw the tower and pinnacles of the holy city, and she smiled in her sleep. Rest and peace and comfort and unawareness of the danger and the sinister plans that were working all around her, danger for the whole beautiful world of peace into which Frannie had been born.

F
rannie’s piano arrived by way of the Bluebell Neighborly Truck Express while Frannie was at church with Val, and under Nurse Branner’s direction was duly installed in the living room, giving the place a cozy air of homelikeness. With it had come two fine old oil paintings of a quaint grandmother with a white organdy cap and kerchief, and a grim grandfather in old-time attire.

“I reckon she wants them pictures hung on the wall, don’t she? I brung the hooks they was hung on, and I told her I’d hang ’em for her,” said the old man who had brought them.

So the nurse went up to Mrs. Fernley for instructions, and when Frannie came home that evening after church there was her beloved piano in the place that had been left vacant for it, and there hung the old pictures in the same relation to the piano that they had occupied in Bluebell.

“Oh, this is nice, isn’t it?” she said with a happy smile as she looked around the room. “It begins to look like home now. When do you think Mother will be able to come downstairs, Nurse Branner?”

“Well, she sat up awhile today, and if her pulse says so, perhaps the doctor will let her come down tomorrow. He’s coming again in the morning, and I’ll ask him. So perhaps we’ll have another surprise for you tomorrow night when you come home. But don’t get your hopes up too high. He may think she ought to stay upstairs another day or two before she attempts to come down.”

Frannie ran up the stairs lightheartedly to see her mother, and her feet seemed to have the old spring, her voice the old ring as she entered her mother’s room.

“My dear!” greeted her mother. “You sound more like your old self than you have since we came here. What has happened?”

“Oh Mother, I’m so glad to have my dear piano back again, and it looks good to see the pictures on the wall. Now it seems as if the family had the right setting.”

Her mother smiled.

“Poor, silly child!” she said smiling. “I’m afraid you’ve got a bit of the old family aristocracy in you yet, in spite of adversity. Don’t encourage it. It always brings discontent.”

Frannie laughed.

“Don’t worry, Mother dear, I could live just as happily without the old family portraits and even the piano, though I am glad to have it, and it does make it seem more like home here.”

“Yes, I know, dear. I was only teasing you. But now, sit down and tell me about your day, and about the church you visited. And most of all, I want to know about that young man. Frannie, you’ve got to be awfully careful. Are you quite sure he’s all right?”

Frannie laughed.

“Well, you can feel quite comfortable about him, Mother. I am sure you would like him. He seems to have been brought up with very much the same ideals you have tried to instill in me, and he’s interested in real things. Books and music, and even the Bible. He’s interested in knowing what Bible students think of this war in relation to the prophecies. That ought to take with you, Mother. I’m sure he would please you.”

“Well yes, he is certainly good-looking and pleasing in his manners. I saw that in just the few minutes when he carried me up to my bed the day I was taken sick. But—” Mrs. Fernley still looked worried.

“Oh yes, I knew you’d say ‘but’ again, Mother. But I’m sure you would like the way he talks about churches, and the way he looks at life. He seems what you call ‘real.’ And he was so interested in the sermon tonight. We talked about it all the way home.”

“Oh yes, how was that sermon? Is the man a good preacher?”