Tammie whined uneasily and Ted woke with a start. He glanced at the
clock on the mantel and saw that it read twenty minutes past five. The
last time he had looked, he remembered, the clock had said half past
two. Obviously he'd fallen asleep in the chair where he'd been waiting
for someone to come or something to happen. No one had come, but they
were coming now. On the Lorton Road, Ted heard the cars that Tammie had
detected twenty seconds earlier.
He got to his feet and looked out into the thin, gray mistiness of early
dawn. With its lights glowing like a ghost's eyes in the wan dimness, a
car churned up the Harkness drive and a second followed it. The boy
shrank away. Last night's events now seemed like some horrible
nightmare, but the tread of steps outside and the knock on the door
proved that they were not.
Ted opened the door to confront Loring Blade and Corporal Paul Hausler,
of the State Police. He glanced beyond them at the men gathered beside
the cars and saw that three of the nine were attired in State Police
uniforms. The six volunteer posse men were Tom and Bud Delbert, Smoky's
brothers; Enos, Alfred and Ernest Brill, his cousins; and Pete Tooms,
who would go anywhere and do anything as long as it promised excitement
and no monotonous labor.