第31章 CHAPTER VI AVIATION AND AVARICE(3)

"There!" he went on, "the cat's out of the bag, and there ain't much more to tell. Everybody made a bolt for the room, old Gabe and Peter T. in the lead. Grace let her dad in, and the ball was ripped open in a hurry. Sure enough! Inside, between the leather and the rubber, was the missin' agreement. Among the jubilations and praise services nobody thought of much else until Snow, the Pinkerton man, come upstairs, his clothes tore and his eyes and nose full of sand.

"'Humph!' says he. 'You've got it, hey? Good! Well, you haven't got friend Parker. Look!'

"Such of us as could looked out of the window. There was the launch, with Parker and his three 'friends' in it, headin' two-forty for blue water.

"'Let 'em go,' says old Gabe, contented. 'I wouldn't arrest 'em if I could. This is no police-station job.'

"It come out afterwards that Parker was a young chap just from law school, who had gone to work for the firm of shysters who was attendin' to the Gordon interests. They had tracked Sterzer to the Old Home House, and had put their new hand on the job of gettin' that agreement. Fust he'd tried to shine up to Grace, but the shine--her part of it--had wore off. Then he decided to steal it; and he done it, just how nobody knows. Snow, the detective, says he cal'lates Henry, the servant, is wiser'n most folks thinks, fur's that's concerned.

"Snow had found out about Parker inside of two days. Soon's he got the report as to who he was, he was morally sartin that he was the thief. He'd looked up Willie's record, too, and that was clear.

In fact, Willie helped him consider'ble. 'Twas him that recognized Parker, havin' seen him play on a law-school team. Also 'twas Willie who thought of the paper bein' in the football.

"Land of love! What a hero they made of that waiter!

"'By the livin' Moses!' bubbles old Gabe, shakin' both the boy's hands. 'That was the finest run and tackle and the finest kick I ever saw anywhere. I've seen every big game for ten years, and I never saw anything half so good.'

"The Pinkerton man laughed. 'There's only one chap on earth who can kick like that. Here he is,' layin' his hand on 'Willie's' shoulder. Bearse, the All-American half-back last year.'

"Gabe's mouth fell open. 'Not "Bung" Bearse, of Yarvard!' he sings out. 'Why! WHY!'

"'Of course, father!' purrs his daughter, smilin' and happy. 'I knew him at once. He and I were--er--slightly acquainted when I was at Highcliffe.'

"'But--but "Bung" Bearse!' gasps the old gent. 'Why, you rascal!

I saw you kick the goal that beat Haleton. Your reputation is worldwide.'

"Willie--Fred Bearse, that is--shook his head, sad and regretful.

"'Thank you, Mr. Sterzer,' says he, in his gentle tenor. 'I have no desire to be famous in athletics. My aspirations now are entirely literary.'

"Well, he's got his literary job at last, bein' engaged as sportin' editor on one of Gabe's papers. His dad, old Sol Bearse, seems to be pretty well satisfied, partic'lar as another engagement between the Bearse family and the Sterzers has just been given out."

Barzilla helped himself to another doughnut. His host leaned back in his chair and laughed uproariously.

"Well, by the great and mighty!" he exclaimed, "that Willie chap certainly did fool you, didn't he. You can't always tell about these college critters. Sometimes they break out unexpected, like chickenpox in the 'Old Men's Home.' Ha! ha! Say, do you know Nate Scudder?"

"Know him? Course I know him! The meanest man on the Cape, and livin' right in my own town, too! Well, if I didn't know him I might trust him, and that would be the beginnin' of the end--for me."

"It sartin would. But what made me think of him was what he told me about his nephew, who was a college chap, consider'ble like your 'Willie,' I jedge. Nate and this nephew, Augustus Tolliver, was mixed up in that flyin'-machine business, you remember."

"I know they was. Mixed up with that Professor Dixland the papers are makin' such a fuss over. Wellmouth's been crazy over it all, but it happened a year ago and nobody that I know of has got the straight inside facts about it yet. Nate won't talk at all.

Whenever you ask him he busts out swearin' and walks off. His wife's got such a temper that nobody dared ask her, except the minister. He tried it, and ain't been the same man since."

"Well," the depot master smilingly scratched his chin, "I cal'late I've got those inside facts."

"You HAVE?"

"Yes. Nate gave 'em to me, under protest. You see, I know Nate pretty well. I know some things about him that . . . but never mind that part. I asked him and, at last, he told me. I'll have to tell you in his words, 'cause half the fun was the way he told it and the way he looked at the whole business. So you can imagine I'm Nate, and--"

"'Twill be a big strain on my imagination to b'lieve you're Nate Scudder, Sol Berry."

"Thanks. However, you'll have to do it for a spell. Well, Nate said that it really begun when the Professor and Olivia landed at the Wellmouth depot with the freight car full of junk. Of course, the actual beginnin' was further back than that, when that Harmon man come on from Philadelphy and hunted him up, makin' proclamation that a friend of his, a Mr. Van Brunt of New York, had said that Scudder had a nice quiet island to let and maybe he could hire it.

"Course Nate had an island--that little sun-dried sandbank a mile or so off shore, abreast his house, which we used to call 'Horsefoot Bar.' That crazy Van Brunt and his chum, Hartley, who lived there along with Sol Pratt a year or so ago, re-christened it 'Ozone Island,' you remember. Nate was willin' to let it. He'd let Tophet, if he owned it, and a fool come along who wanted to hire it and could pay for the rent and heat.

"So Nate and this Harmon feller rowed over to the Bar--to Ozone Island, I mean--and the desolation and loneliness of it seemed to suit him to perfection. So did the old house and big barn and all the tumbledown buildin's stuck there in the beach-grass and sand.