IV

The next morning he announced Cornford as their next stopping point, a

town, he explained, whose history thrust far back into colonial times.

When they were seated in the parlor car he tossed a bundle of magazines

into Archie's lap.

"It will amuse you to know that one of the policemen we met on the road

looking for Hoky's accomplice is standing on the platform. He's just

inspected the day coaches;--never occurs to him that knaves of our

degree travel de luxe."

He yawned as the train started and drew a small volume from his pocket.

"I shall lose myself in old Horatius Flaccus for an hour. It's odd but I

always do my best concentrating with a poet before me. And what you said

yesterday about those new bank notes Leary has hid up here disturbed me

just a little. You can't trust fellows of old Leary's type with a matter

so delicate as launching new money, where the numbers, as you so sagely

remarked, are being looked for by every bank teller in America. I have a

hunch that something unusual will happen before the summer's over, and

we must be primed for every emergency."

Archie saw that it was really a volume of the Horatian odes in which his

singular companion had become engrossed. The Governor was utterly beyond

him and he stared out moodily at the flying landscape, hating himself

cordially as he thought of Isabel Perry and living over again the

exciting moments in the Congdon house that preluded this strange

journeying with a scholarly criminal who evidently derived the deepest

satisfaction from the perusal of Latin poetry. The Governor broke in

upon his reflections occasionally to read him a favorite passage or to

ask questions, flattering to Archie's learning, as to possible

interpretations of the venerated text.

The Cornford Inn proved to be a quaint old tavern, modernized, and its

patrons, the Governor explained, were limited to cultivated people who

sought the peace and calm of the hills. After a leisurely luncheon they

took their coffee in a pleasant garden on one side of the house.

"One might be in France or Italy," remarked the Governor, lighting a

cigar. "An ideal place; socially most exclusive, and I trust we shall

have no reason to regret our visit."

"That depends," said Archie, inspecting the end of his cigarette, "on

whether we are transferred to the county jail or not."

"Your apprehensions are as absurd as they are groundless, my dear boy.

We could cash checks for any reasonable sum in this caravanserai merely

on our appearance as men of education and property. Even in stolen

clothes you look like a capitalist."

Two men came into the garden and seated themselves at a table on the

other side of a screen of shrubbery. They ordered coffee and one of them

remarked upon the recent prevalence of crime in New England.

"A thief was shot at Bailey Harbor night before last and there seems to

be a band of crooks operating all along the coast."

"We need a better type of men in Congress," said the Governor in a loud

tone, with a wink at Archie. "There's a steady deterioration in the

quality of our representatives in both houses."

"You are right," Archie responded, remembering with a twinge of

conscience his congressman brother-in-law.

The Governor nodded to Archie to keep on talking, while he played the

rôle of eavesdropper.

"You oughtn't to have carried that cash up here," came in a low tone

from the hedge. "The old man is a fool or he wouldn't have suggested

such a thing."

"Well, he wrote that he was coming here to spend a week and in his

characteristic fashion said if I wanted his stock I could bring the

currency here and close the transaction. The Congdons are all a lot of

cranks, you know. This old curmudgeon carries a small fortune around

with him all the time, and never accepts a check in any transaction."

The Governor grew more eloquent in his attempt to convince Archie of the

decadence of American statesmanship, while their unseen neighbors,

feeling themselves secure, continued their discussion of the errand that

had brought them to Cornford.

"You're paying the old skunk a big price for his shares!"

"Well, I've got to to keep them out of hostile hands," said the second

voice irritably. "I don't like the idea of carrying yellowbacks around

in a satchel just to humor a lunatic. And he's had the nerve to write

that he won't be here until tomorrow!"

"But the cash--"

"Oh, it's all safe enough. No one knows but that I'm here just for a

rest."

"Let's stroll about a little," said the Governor. "We're not getting our

usual amount of exercise and there's a good bit of colonial history

tucked away in Cornford."

He led the way through the garden to the street, and bade Archie proceed

slowly to the post office while he walked toward the main entrance of

the inn.

Archie was buying stamps for which he had no immediate use when the

Governor joined him.

"These chaps were quite providentially in the office calling for their

keys so I had no trouble in identifying them. Seebrook and Walters are

the names. Seebrook, the older chap, has his daughter with him. They

have rooms on the floor below us."

"You don't think they've got any considerable sum of money with them, do

you?" asked Archie breathlessly.

"That remains to be seen! Did you notice their reference to a man named

Congdon? Singular how I keep running into members of that tribe. I'm

beginning to think there's a fatality in the name!"

Archie glanced at him covertly. He too felt that there was something

decidedly strange in the way the name haunted him, but the Governor had

picked up a local guide book and was pointing out objects of interest as

they wended their way along the street. Archie's wits had never been so

taxed as since he had fired a pistol, more or less with intent to kill,

in the house of Putney Congdon, but it was incredible that the Governor

could know aught of that matter. The Governor, however, was manifesting

the greatest interest in Cornford history, halting citizens to propound

inquiries as to landmarks, and pausing before the town hall to make

elaborate notes of a tablet struck in memory of the first selectmen.

When they reached the green, which the town's growth had left to one

side, he sat down on a bench and directed attention to a church whose

history he read impressively from the book.

"That carries us back quite a way beyond the Revolution. No longer used

but reverently preserved for its associations. And in the cellar of that

simple edifice where the early colonists used to hide from predatory

Indians, is hidden fifty thousand dollars. A suitcase all ready to

snatch, thrust under the bin where the worshipers of old kept the Sunday

wood!"

"I suppose it might rot there and nobody be the wiser?" muttered Archie,

glancing at the venerable meeting house with awakened interest.

"Quite true! But it must be saved from destruction. We mustn't fail

Leary; he's put his trust in me. It's our job to recover the funds, and

if I never ask you to join me in anything more perilous you'll have

occasion to congratulate yourself. There are two automobiles at the

church door now--tourists, having a look at the relic, and their

presence will neatly cover our visit."

They found half a dozen visitors roaming through the church, opening and

closing the doors of the old pews. Archie was accosted by a stout lady

in quest of just the information he had gained from the guide book. He

courteously answered her questions and found the other sightseers

pressing round to share in his lecture on the Cornford meeting house.

When he had imparted everything he knew and added a few fanciful touches

to improve the story, he turned to look for the Governor.

"If you want to see the cellar, don't tumble down the steps as I did,"

called a cheery voice from the entry; "it's an abominable hole!"

Being an abominable hole the visitors laughingly surged toward the door

to explore it, and the Governor struck matches to light their descent.

He brushed the dust from his knees and mopped his face until the voices

below receded.

"All safe and sound! Stuck it out through a back window into a lilac

bush, and we'll pick it up at our leisure. You may not have noticed that

this old pile is built up against an abandoned mill. We shall loiter

back to the inn carrying the loot quite boldly with us. You might lug it

yourself as I'm a little warm from digging the thing up--Leary had

burrowed under the wood bin and hidden it for keeps."

To be sauntering in broad daylight through the principal thoroughfare of

a serene New England town carrying a suitcase filled with stolen money

was still another experience that made Archie feel that he had indeed

entered upon a new manner of life. The Governor with a spray of lilac in

his lapel had never been in better spirits.

"That's a very decent suitcase and you can hand it to a bell hop and

bid him fly with it to your room. You were a little short of linen and

made a few purchases--the thing explains itself. Who could challenge us,

Archie! We'd make a plausible front in Buckingham palace."

They followed the suitcase upstairs, where the Governor unlocked it

with an implement that looked like a nut pick. Archie's last vestige of

doubt as to the Governor's powers vanished when he saw that the bag was

filled with packages of bank notes in small denominations.

"One might object to so many of the little fellows," remarked the

Governor, "but on the whole we have no reason to complain of Leary's

work. The rascal is anxious to settle down in some strictly moral

community and open a confectionery shop--one of these little concerns

where the neighborhood children bring in their pennies for sodas and

chewing-gum, with a line of late magazines on the side. A kind, genial

man is Leary, and he swears he'll abandon the road for good."

Archie picked up several bundles of the bills and turned them over,

reflecting that to his other crimes he had now added the receipt and

concealment of stolen money.

"Dinner in an hour, Archie," said the Governor, who was drawing a

diagram of some sort on a sheet of inn paper. "The evening meal is

rather a ceremonial affair here and as I notice that you carry a dress

suit we shall follow the conventions. Meanwhile I wish you would look in

at Barclay & Pedding's garage, just around the comer, and ask if a car

has been left there for Mr. Reginald H. Saulsbury. You needn't be afraid

of getting pinched, for the machine was acquired by purchase and I'm

merely borrowing it from Abe Collins, _alias_ Slippery Abe, the king of

all con men. Abe only plays for suckers of financial prominence who'd

gladly pay a second time not to be exposed and he's grown so rich that

he's retiring this summer. He was to send a machine to me here so I

could avoid the petty annoyances of travel in a stolen car We'll leave

here like honest men, with the landlord bowing us away from the door."

That there should indeed be a handsome touring car at Barclay &

Pedding's, awaiting the pleasure of Mr. Saulsbury, increased enormously

Archie's respect and admiration for the Governor. It was a first-class

machine worth four or five thousand dollars as it stood, and Archie was

cheered by the thought that he enjoyed the friendship of a man who

satisfied all his needs with so little trouble.

When he returned the Governor was dressing and manifested no surprise

that the car awaited his pleasure.

"Yes, of course," he remarked absently. "You can always rely on Abe.

It's time for you to dress, and we must look our prettiest. I caught a

glimpse of Miss Seebrook strolling through the garden with her papa a

bit ago. It may be necessary for you to cultivate her a trifle. A little

flirting now and then is relished by the wisest men."

"If you think--" began Archie warily.

"Of course I think!" the Governor interrupted. "We've got fifty thousand

dollars of nice new bills here and we're not going to the trouble of

staining and mussing them up for safe circulation if we can dispose of

them _en bloc_, so to speak, in all their pristine freshness. There's to

be a dance in the dining hall as soon as dinner is over. The house is

quite full and we shall mingle freely in the merry throng. I'll go down

ahead of you and test the social atmosphere a little."

When Archie reached the parlors half an hour later he found the Governor

engaged in lively conversation with a gentleman he introduced

immediately as Mr. Seebrook.

"And Mr. Walters, Mr. Comly, and--"

"Mr. Saulsbury and Mr. Comly, my daughter, Miss Seebrook."

The girl had just joined her father and his friend. She acknowledged the

introduction with an inclusive smile and nod. Archie's spirits, which

drooped whenever he was deprived of the Governor's enlivening presence

for a few minutes, were revived by this fresh demonstration of the

rascal's daring effrontery. Seebrook and Walters were apparently

accepting him at face value in the fashion of socially inclined

travelers who meet in inns. To Archie's consternation the Governor began

describing Hoky's funeral, which he did without neglecting any of its

poignant features or neglecting to mention the few remarks he had

offered to relieve the bleakness of the burglar's obsequies.

"That was pretty fine, wasn't it?" Miss Seebrook remarked to Archie.

"Any one would know that Mr. Saulsbury is just the kind of man who would

do that."

"There's no limit to his kindness and generosity," Archie replied with

unfeigned sincerity.

"You are motoring?" asked the girl. "We drove through here last fall to

see the foliage,--it's perfectly wonderful, but I didn't know it could

be so sweet at this season. I adore summer; don't you adore summer, Mr.

Comly?"

Miss Seebrook was the most obvious of sentimentalists and Archie thought

instantly how different she was from Isabel. But being thrown in the

company of any girl made possible the concrete comparison of Isabel with

the rest of womankind very greatly to Isabel's advantage. Miss Seebrook

was about Isabel's age, but she spoke in a languid purring voice that

was wholly unlike Isabel's crisp, direct manner of speech. Her father

had come up on some tiresome business matter, bringing Mr. Walters, who,

it seemed, was his attorney, and she confessed that they talked business

a great deal, which bored her immensely.

"I judge, Mr. Comly, that you are one of those fortunate men who can

throw business to the winds and have a good time without being bothered

with telegrams from a hateful office."

Her assumption flattered Archie. As his immediate concern was to escape

the consequences of his folly in shooting a fellow mortal, he assured

her that he was always glad of an opportunity to fling business cares

aside. She explained that the inn was much affected by cottagers in

neighboring summer settlements and that many of the diners had motored

in for the dance. Seebrook and Walters were undoubtedly enjoying the

Governor, proof of which was immediately forthcoming when Seebrook

suggested that they should all dine together.

"You do us much honor," said the Governor. "Mr. Comly and I shall be

pleased, I'm sure."

Archie had often eaten alone in just such pleasant little inns from

sheer lack of courage to make acquaintances, but it seemed the most

natural thing in the world for the Governor to establish himself on

terms of intimacy with perfect strangers. Their party was the merriest

in the room, and Archie was aware of envious glances from other tables

that were not enlivened by a raconteur so affable and amusing as the

Governor.

"It's so nice to stumble into a place like this where every one may

speak to every one else and be _sure_, you know!" said Miss Seebrook.

"It does rather strengthen one's faith in the human race," Archie

agreed, reflecting that if she had known that upstairs in the amiable

Mr. Saulsbury's room reposed fifty thousand dollars of stolen money her

confidence in the exclusiveness of the Cornford Inn would have been

somewhat shaken. But the ironic humor of the whole thing overmastered

his sense of guilt and he managed to hold the table for a little while

without the Governor's assistance as he talked of the French chateaux

with honest knowledge. The Seebrooks had motored through the chateau

country the year before the war and as Archie had once made the

excursion with an architect he was on firm ground.

"There's a thorough man for you!" exclaimed the Governor proudly when

Archie supplied some dates in French history for which Miss Seebrook

fumbled.

They continued their talk over coffee served in the garden. When the

music began Seebrook and Walters recalled a bridge engagement and the

Governor announced that he must look up an old friend who lived in

Cornford. He produced a piece of paper on which he had scratched one of

the diagrams he was eternally sketching as though consulting a

memorandum of an address.

"I shall be back shortly," he said as they separated in the office.

Seebrook and Walters found their bridge partners and Archie and Miss

Seebrook joined the considerable company that were already dancing. Only

a few days earlier nothing could have persuaded Archie to dance, but now

that he was plunged into a life of adventure the fear of dropping dead

from excessive exercise no longer restrained him. Miss Seebrook

undoubtedly enjoyed dancing and after a one-step and a fox-trot she

declared that she would just love to dance all night. It had been a long

time since Archie had heard a girl make this highly unoriginal remark,

and in his own joy of the occasion he found it tinkling pleasantly in

remote recesses of his memory. As Miss Seebrook pouted when he suggested

that she might like him to introduce some of the other men and said that

she was perfectly satisfied, he hastened to assure her that the rôle of

monopolist was wholly agreeable to him. In this mad new life a

flirtation was only an incident of the day's work, and Miss Seebrook was

not at all averse to flirting with him.

She thought it would be fine to take a breath of air, and gathering up

her cloak they went into the garden for an ice. This refreshment ordered

he was conscious of new and pleasant thrills as he faced her across the

table. His youth stirred in him again. It was reassuring to have this

proof that one might be a lost sheep dyed to deepest black and yet

indulge in philandering under the June stars with a pretty girl--a

handsome stately girl she was!--unrestrained by the thought that she

would run away screaming for the police if she knew that he was a man

who shot people and consorted with thieves and very likely would die on

the gallows or be strapped in an electric chair before he got his

deserts. His mind had passed through innumerable phases since he left

his sister's house in Washington, and now as he shamelessly flirted with

Miss Seebrook he knew himself for an unmoral creature, a degenerate who

was all the more dangerous for being able to pass muster among decent

folk. He had always imagined that citizens of the underworld were

limited in their social indulgences to cautious meetings in the back

rooms of low saloons, but this he had found to be a serious mistake. It

was clear that the élite among the lawless might ride the high crest of

social success.

His only nervousness was due to the fear that he might betray himself.

It was wholly possible that Miss Seebrook knew some of his friends; in

fact she mentioned a family in Lenox that he knew very well. She was

expert in all the niceties of flirtation and he responded joyously, as

surprised and delighted as a child with a new toy at the ease with which

he conveyed to her the idea that his life had been an immeasurable dark

waste till she had dawned upon his enraptured vision. Her back was

toward the inn and across her shoulders he could see the swaying figures

in the ball room. The light from a garden lamp played upon her head and

brightened in her fair hair.

Miss Seebrook was speaking of music, and reciting the list of operas she

loved best when Archie's gaze was caught and held by a shadow that

flitted along an iron fire escape that zigzagged down from the fourth to

the first story of the long rambling inn.

"You seem very dreamy," remarked Miss Seebrook. "I know how that is for

I can dream for hours and hours."

"Yes; reverie; just floating on clouds, on and on," Archie replied,

though the shadow moving on and on along the side of the inn was

troubling him not a little.

"The stars were never so near as they are tonight," she said. "Was it

Shakspere or Longfellow who said, 'bright star, would I were steadfast

as thou art!'"

It was neither, Archie knew, but he said he thought the line occurred in

Hamlet.

"Do you think Hamlet was insane?" she asked.

"I sometimes think I am," replied Archie, watching the shadow on the inn

wall.

"Why, Mr. Comly, how absurd!"

It was really not so absurd at the moment, but he again had recourse to

the poets, devoutly praying that she would not look toward the inn. He

had surmised that the Governor's declared purpose to call on an old

friend in Cornford was merely to cover his withdrawal from the party;

but that he could have meditated a predatory excursion through the inn

had not entered into Archie's speculations as to his friend's absence.

There was no mistaking the figure that had moved swiftly down the

ladder. The Governor for a man of his compact build was amazingly agile

and quick of foot and hand. He was now creeping along the little balcony

at the third floor. He paused a moment and then vanished into an open

window. The Governor had said that the Seebrook party had rooms just

under their own; but--

"I have chosen a star for you," Miss Seebrook was murmuring.

Archie, in his preoccupation with the Governor's strange performance,

was so slow to respond that Miss Seebrook, thinking that he was

deliberating as to which star he should bestow upon her in return,

generously broadened the scope of her offer.

"You shall have Orion or Arcturus with his sons."

"I never could find Orion even with a sky map and a telescope," Archie

roused himself to protest.

Something very unlike a star but more like the glimmer of a match in a

room on the third floor held his fascinated gaze, and it was difficult

to be interested in the conversation of even so pretty a girl as Miss

Seebrook when an audacious thief was at work only a little way beyond

her. For all Archie knew it was her own room that the venturesome

Governor was ransacking and at that very moment he might be stuffing his

pockets with her belongings.

Venus, Archie gravely announced, had always been his favorite star; and

he set her to searching for it in the bright expanse while he watched

the Governor reappear, bending low as he crept out of the window and

ascended rapidly to the fourth floor. He had risked detection by a dozen

people who were idling about the garden. The intermission was over and

music floating through the open windows again invited to the dance.

"We must go back, I suppose," said Miss Seebrook with a sigh.

"I shall never forget this," declared Archie, hoping with all his heart

that there would be no occasion for regretting the hour spent in the

garden.

They danced again, and in the handclapping that followed the first

number he turned to find the Governor, calm and with no marks of his

escapade upon him, bowing before Miss Seebrook.

"Really, I must break in! Just a little fragment of this waltz! More

capricious and jazzy measures have their day but the waltz endures

forever! Don't frown at me that way, Comly! My old friend kept me longer

than I expected and the night grows old."

The Governor danced with smoothness and ease. Archie, his back to the

wall, saw the rogue laughing into his partner's face as lightheartedly

as though he had not, within a few minutes, imperiled his freedom in an

act of sheerest folly.

He brought the girl back to Archie, and then ingratiated himself with a

shy elderly woman who was having a difficult time finding partners for

her granddaughters. The Governor introduced himself with a charming

deference, a winning courtesy, that gained her heart at once. He not

only danced with her young charges but found other partners for them.

Archie marveled; a man of the Governor's intelligence and address could

hardly have failed to gain a high place in the world, yet his

performance on the fire escape proved all the man had said of himself as

an outlaw. The Governor was not one man but a dozen different men and in

despair Archie gave up trying to account for him.

V

At midnight Seebrook and Walters came in from their card game.

"We've certainly had the best of you, papa! It has been a wonderful

evening!" exclaimed Miss Seebrook.

"I knew it was going to be a good party," said the Governor warmly. "I

regretted every moment I had to spend with my friends in Putnam Street.

And yet should auld acquaintance be forgot, you know!"

"You were perfectly lovely to that nice old lady and her frightened

little granddaughters. They will never forget you as long as they live!

And I'm afraid Mr. Comly will always remember me as the girl who kept

him all to herself for a whole evening."

"I didn't make it a hard job for you," Archie protested. "I shall mark

the evening with a white stone on the long journey of life."

"I hope, papa, you will add a word to my invitation to these gentlemen

to come and see us at home."

"Certainly," Seebrook assented cordially, drawing out his card-case.

"We shall be ready for a little sociability," remarked the Governor,

"when we return from the West. We are motoring from Portland to

Portland, with a few little side trips like this, and we ought to have

some good yarns to tell when we get back."

"You are not running off immediately?" asked Walters. "Mr. Seebrook and

I are really here on business, but we've been delayed and may have

another day's time to kill. We'd be glad to play around with you."

"It's most lamentable," replied the Governor, "that we've got to run

away tomorrow. It's now the hour when ghosts walk but we shall see you

in the morning."

In Archie's room the Governor hummed one of his favorite ballads as he

slipped out of his coat and picked a speck from his snowy waistcoat.

Then he produced a tiny phial from his pocket and touched his upper lip

with a drop of the contents.

"It's a very curious thing about perfumes," he said meditatively. "I

carry an assortment of these little bottles. The psychology of the thing

is most interesting. Fragrances differ astonishingly as to their

reactions upon the nerves. Only two hours ago I fortified myself for a

little foolishness that required nevertheless a steady hand by sniffing

the bouquet of a rare perfume known only to a few connoisseurs,--a

compound based upon attar of roses. But this that I have just had

recourse to is soothing and sedative. It is made from a rare flower

found only in the most inaccessible fastnesses of the Andes, and is

believed by the natives to be a charm against death. At some time I

shall be glad to show you a treatise on the plant written by an eminent

Spanish botanist. Its effect upon me is instantaneous and yet it might

serve you quite differently, as our sensitiveness to these reactions of

the olfactory nerve are largely idiosyncratic. Let me tap your upper lip

with the cork--ah!"

There was nothing more repulsive to Archie than perfumes and he

impatiently jerked his head away. The odor proved, however, to be

exceedingly delicate and not the miserable chemical concoction he

dreaded. But he was not to be thwarted in his purpose to learn just what

the Governor meant by endangering their security so recklessly. He

slammed the transom tight and drew down the shades.

"Well?" he demanded sharply.

"It is evident," remarked the Governor good-humoredly, "that you do not

react to the soothing influences of the _rosa alta_. You seem perturbed,

anxious, with slight symptoms of _paralysis agitans_. Pray be seated and

I will do my best to restore your peace of mind."

"You needlessly exposed yourself to observation by sneaking down the

fire escape of this hotel--I know that!"

"My dear boy, I was merely gathering a few blossoms of the crimson

rambler from the ancient walls of the inn. You may have noted that I

wore a spray of buds in my lapel when I joined you in the ball room."

"You had no right to plunder the house without warning me! I don't

relish the idea of being jailed for your foolishness. And those people

were mighty decent to us! If they knew we were two crooks--!"

"They merely yielded to our charms! They feel themselves honored by our

acquaintance! Now seat yourself on the bed and I'll tell you the whole

story. When I left you I hastened into the village, bought a stick of

shaving soap in a drug store and a few cigars in a tobacconist's. In

each place I conversed with the clerk, thus laying ample ground for an

alibi. Hurrying back to the inn I avoided observation by entering by the

side door, skipped up to our rooms--and there you are! I did run a

chance, of course, in climbing down the ladder, but all's well that ends

well. I exchanged our new bank notes for sixty well-worn

one-thousand-dollar gold certificates negotiable in all parts of the

republic. That means a net gain in the Red Leary trust fund of ten

thousand dollars. Seebrook had the stuff in the collar tray of his

trunk. As the trunk was otherwise empty and the lock a special one that

gave me a bit of trouble he's not likely to bother with it until old man

Congdon turns up to close the stock transaction. When he opens it he

will find fifty thousand dollars of good bills neatly piled there and

if he has the imagination of a canary he will think the fairies have

played a trick on him!"

"My God!" moaned Archie. "You don't think you can get away with this!"

"I think," returned the Governor imperturbably, "that _we_ must and will

get away with it." His emphasis on the plural pronoun caused Archie to

cringe. "It strikes me as highly amusing that we have unloaded those

bills of Leary's on a good sport like Seebrook. As I locked that stuff

in his trunk I got to laughing--really, I did--and a chambermaid roaming

the hall must have heard me, for the key rattled in the lock just as I

slipped out of the window. There's Leary's suitcase and I've packed it

with our soiled linen and stuck in a pair of shoes for weight.

Seebrook's legal tender is neatly rolled up in my best silken hose in my

kit bag. Hark! There's Seebrook tumbling into his bed, which is just

beneath mine!"

"You're getting me in pretty deep," mumbled Archie dejectedly.

"How about those blood stains on the sidewalk at Bailey Harbor?" asked

the Governor in his blandest tones. "When you speak of getting in deep

you forget that some one besides Hoky was shot back yonder. You came to

me red-handed from a deed of violence, and I took you in and became your

protector, asking no questions. It's the basest ingratitude for you to

whimper over a small larceny when you have added assault or murder to

the liabilities of our partnership! But don't forget for a moment that

we're pals and pledged to see each other through."

The reference to the blood stains reported by the Bailey Harbor police

threw Archie back instantly upon the Governor's mercy. Complicity in

the robbery of Seebrook was as nothing compared with the haunting fear

that the man he had shot in the Congdon house had died from the wound.

Unable to determine this question he was floundering in a veritable sea

of crimes. The Governor was undressing with provoking indifference to

his companion's perturbation.

"Sleep, lad, sleep! You may be sure that nothing will harm us tonight,

and I have faith that more stirring adventures are ahead of us. I

forgive you your qualms and quavers, the pardonable manifestations of

youth and inexperience. We walk in slippery places but we shall not

stumble, at least not while the Governor keeps his head!"

Nothing appealed to Archie as of greater importance than the retention

by his companion of the head that now lay chastely upon a snowy pillow.

A handsome, well-formed head, a head suggestive of family and the pride

of race, though filled with the most complicated mental machinery with

which a human being had ever been endowed.

"Put out the lights and get you to your couch!" the Governor muttered

drowsily.

The man certainly wore his crimes lightly. He was sound asleep before

Archie had got into his pajamas.