The Street of the City (26 page)

“You made a pretty good job of camouflage if you did do it in a hurry. Suppose you just fling a few more shovels full of stuff across the top, and we’ll let her go for tonight. I guess we’ll be safe. One more night ought to get us through the wall. If the weather would only favor us. A good warm rain, or even a melting snow would melt that ice and cause it to crack, and then if a wind would come up we’d have plenty of noise to hide our movements. There! Put some of that snow on the top. Now come on, let’s go! Tomorrow night we’ll break through that wall and get our stuff, and then we can take our time getting the rough building put up. I been figuring it out while I sat here, and it’s going to seem just like another operation of the same carpenters that built those houses over there. I think we’ll get by. You’re a good fellow all right, Mike, and here’s an extra ten bucks for a little velvet for you, so be here on time tomorrow night.”

They went away toward the parked car which had been left in a new place that night. And as soon as the sound of the car’s going died away two figures separated themselves from their hiding place and slowly made their way over to the scene of the night’s action.

Their rubber-shod feet made no stir of sound in the silence of the place. They picked their way over to the trench, and with their flashlights bored into the carelessly placed covering to the enlarged trench. Quietly with heavily gloved hands they removed enough of it to discover the boards. These they studied for some minutes, conversed with sketchy gestures, now and then a whisper, finally removed more rubble until they could move the end of one board enough to get a narrow view of the concealed wires sticking out of the brick wall. After carefully examining the layout, which included reaching in and tapping the wall gently, the two men softly returned the rubble into place and stepped over to the newly arrived lumber, which they looked over carefully. Then they retired to a distance and turned their glances up to the tree tops.

“Say, Tom, if that’s a radio, there’s an aerial around here somewhere. Which tree do you think had it?”

Tom looked up speculatively at the treetops, and finally pointed to the tallest one.

“I think that there one, Rowley.”

“Yes, I shouldn’t wonder. Think you could climb that tree and find out? We gotta get this thing all figured out before we clamp down on them. We gotta know just what to expect.”

“Sure thing!” said Tom. “Yep, I’ll take a try at her, but it ain’t necessary to go all the way up to find out. Them wires will be going up the tree trunks somewhere around here, if it is an aerial.”

“Okay! Look around and cipher it out. I’m figuring they’ll have to show their hands pretty soon. Maybe tomorrow night, maybe the next. We better have a posse ready when the time comes. You can’t tell just what those babies have got up their sleeves or what they’re figuring to do. We’ve gotta be ready. You know it might just be they’re planning to put dynamite under that brick wall.”

“What for would they do that?”

“Well, for some reason they wantta get possession of that house. Looks like they’ve had an illegal radio hid there somewhere and mebbe some incriminating stuff. You know there’s been a lotta messages leakin’ through to the enemy. There’s bound to be several places where they send off messages.”

“Okay, Boss,” said Tom, and he was off.

It was some time before he returned.

“I found the aerial all right,” he said. “Far side of that tallest tree, behind them evergreens.”

“I thought so,” said Rowley. “They must have a radio transmitter hidden away. They may have had it going there for some time. It’s good and lonely here. Nobody would suspect. You had to look hard to find that aerial. Nobody would notice it, going by, and nobody even went by here for several years.”

“But if it’s a mic, they could get another easy.”

“Yes. It’s something more than just a mic. Something incriminating or I miss my guess.”

“Watcha goin’ to do about it, Rowley?”

“Ain’t sure yet. Gotta think it over. Come on, let’s go!” And the two men slowly faded out of the picture.

But up in the third little bedroom where Nurse Branner had been sleeping since Mrs. Fernley was better, she was lying awake listening. She hadn’t heard anything definite, but she was almost sure someone had been whispering. Yet when she slid over to the window she couldn’t see anyone, for it was very dark. The little moon was tired of its walking across the sky and had dropped down behind the hills to rest until another night. Yet Nurse Branner was much comforted by the thought of Officer Rowley, and his reassuring voice, and also by the promise that the telephone would be installed tomorrow morning. At last she, too, dropped off to sleep again.

About that time Marietta Hollister, driving home from an evening of revelry, passed just across the river from the little brick house and cast a baleful glance in that direction. To think that Val Willoughby had dared to come into that house while she was there and openly taken that girl out somewhere! Where had they been going? And why had he mentioned Lady Winthrop? Later on, she scarcely had time to consider that point, so excited she had been about falling into that hole at the back of the house and about the two missing escorts. Besides, one of them had called up the next morning to know if she had found a pass into the shipyard where he worked. And then he asked her when they were going to get their “dough.” Imagine it—when they had simply checked out and left her alone!

W
illoughby had told Frannie on the way home from the Bible class that he was probably going to be called to Washington for a conference and it might be several days before his return. He had arranged for someone to look after his job while he was gone, but he was worried about her.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t go down on skates for a couple of days. The weather reports say there is going to be milder weather and a likelihood of the ice melting. Also storms in the near future. It won’t be too safe on skates. Ice is treacherous, you know, when it begins to melt. I wish you would promise me to stay off the ice for a few days.”

“But surely I could tell if the ice wasn’t safe,” said Frannie. “I’ve been skating since I was a very little girl.”

“Well, it isn’t always easy to predict what weather will do to a frozen river. Besides, there are undercurrents to be reckoned with. And besides, number two, there are those two fellows. If Marietta has them under her wings there is no telling what the three of them might not plan. Just go quietly downtown on the bus that passes by on the next street over behind your house. It goes down and crosses the river at the lower bridge and comes around by your office. You will get there a little ahead of your shift. Will you do that? If you don’t, I shall be uneasy all the time I am gone, and remember, I haven’t settled my score entirely with those two hoodlums, and if they find out I’m gone they may take advantage of you. They are cowards, I know, but I think they are fairly scared of me and would delight to get the better of you in my absence. Besides, Marietta hasn’t helped matters for us any by what she did tonight. So, stay off the ice while I’m gone, will you?”

“Why yes, I can if that will help you any, but really I don’t see why you should worry about me. I’m not in the least afraid.”

“Then all the more I’m worried. You see, I feel as if you had in a way been put in my hands to look out for until you get thoroughly acquainted with the place. And anyhow, I want you to, please.”

So Frannie smiled and promised and told her tumultuous young heart not to make anything out of that. He was just courteous and felt that a gentleman ought to protect a lady, any lady. He wasn’t singling her out because he had any particular interest in her. And then their talk drifted back to the subject of the Bible class and how pleasant it was to have an opportunity to study there.

“It’s going to be a great privilege to go to that class,” she said. “And when Mother gets well she’ll want to go. Bonnie can go, too. She always behaves beautifully in church.”

“That’s a fine idea, only won’t she get pretty sleepy?”

“No, she got used to going to church evenings all last summer, and she can sleep it out the next morning if she wants.”

So Frannie did not expect to meet Willoughby the next morning and got up a little earlier to be ready for the bus. She cast a wistful eye toward the ice as she started out to the bus stop, but after all it was milder, and there were gray clouds with a sullen look off toward the east. As she got out of the bus she felt a drop of rain. Rain? So soon? Perhaps the weather man had been right about it, as the young man had suggested. Probably he usually was. Frannie never read the weather reports. She usually took weather as it came with a smile, whether dark or bright. Well, she was glad that she had come by bus. It certainly would not be good to have to skate home in the rain. But as for safety, she smiled. Surely a little rain couldn’t break up that thick ice that she had traveled so happily on for so many days. But it made her feel sad to see the rain come pelting down now. She hurried into the office, and as she hung up her hat and coat, she looked out the back window and saw the rain come down in a regular torrent, as if it had come to stay. It made her sad to see it pelting down so hard that it fairly leaped up again. It had such a determined, destructive look, and she almost felt pity for the clear ice that had carried her so safely. Would it come again that winter? Would there yet be cold fierce enough to make a solid street of it again? Probably not until next year.

As she went to her desk there was a heavy sadness upon her. This threat to the ice meant more than just losing the skating. It probably meant an end to her acquaintance with the young man whose friendship had made such a bright spot in her drab life. Probably that was a good thing, for it could not naturally go on to a lifelong friendship. That Marietta had made quite plain, even if she herself had not had sense enough to know that he belonged among a different class of people. Even if he was sensible and democratic and all that, he had a family, hadn’t he? An aunt, at least, who lived in that beautiful house and kept company with people on the other side of the river where she, Frannie, did not belong. Yes, it was probably a good thing that this storm and separation had come before it was too late for her to realize that she was getting far too interested in this young man who had been so very kind.

So Frannie went to work and accomplished a great deal on that long, gloomy day and did not allow herself a moment to turn aside to think. She must be true to the life that God had marked out for her. And she tried to think, every breathing space that came, how grand it was going to be to have Mother come downstairs again.

The rain continued according to schedule, all that day, growing harder and harder, steadily through the night. The two figures that crept through the darkness at the back of the old brick house on the wrong side of the river came in an old car and parked it this time up the back street, hidden behind bushes. Also they wore rubber coats and rubber hats, and they waited until the nightly load of lumber was safely deposited before they began operations. But when the lumber truck was gone they went at it in earnest.

“You get that trench cleared right up close to the brick wall, Mike,” directed Granniss, who was decked out in old clothes and looked like a laborer himself. “Get a pile of stuff each side of the trench and then we’ll lay those two boards across to cover us while we work. Maybe a couple more. We gotta work fast, and this is just the kind of a night we wanted. Listen to that ice cracking. Sounds like a gun. A little pounding won’t be heard. This is great! The river’ll be breaking up pretty soon. Come, let’s get to work. I’ll get the car ready to receive the stuff when we get it out. I brought some boxes along so we won’t get the papers wet. Got some important maps and plans in there.”

So Mike went down on his rubber-shod knees with pick and shovel, and soon he had the upper end of the trench cleared, placing the rubble in a pile on either side and laying the boards across.

The wind rose and howled around the place and shook the bare branches of the trees until now and again one fell with a crash; but there were so many crashes that it would not be noticed. And in a short time the bare brick wall lay close ahead, with the wires sticking out. Mike found himself quite excited to think he was at last so near to the goal and actually working now out of sight, where he could guardedly use his flashlight.

Of course Mike could not know that two figures watched across the street, who were well aware of the strange activities going on and that the guarded little flashlight, whose sharp brightness danced and gleamed through the rain like diamonds, was entirely within their sight. Mike did not know that when he had accomplished the feat of chiseling a brick or two loose, so that he could put his hand inside and feel around for things he had been told to locate, one of the two across the street in hiding had quietly slipped from his shelter to his hidden bicycle and noiselessly pedaled away to a telephone booth not too far off, where he had arranged to call the police station and give instructions. Then he went back to Rowley, who was carefully watching developments, listening to every movement.