HE DOES MOST OF THE TALKING AND TAKES ALL THE BLAME
Tramp, tramp, tramp--all through the endless, wakeful hours he heard
that soldier marching back and forth, back and forth, outside the door.
Every sound of those steady footfalls was like a blow, stinging afresh
the cruel wound which had been opened in his impassive nature. He was
under arrest and under guard. If he should try to get out that soldier
would order him to halt, and if he didn't halt the soldier would shoot
him. He wondered if the guard were Pickles.
He did not think at all about his deductive triumph now. And he did not
care much about what they would do with him. He wondered a little what
the soldiers would say--particularly Frenchy. But if only his brother
would talk to him and ask about their mother he could bear everything
else--the dashing of his triumph, the danger he was in, the shame. The
shame, most of all.
He did not care so much now about being Sherlock Nobody Holmes--he had
had enough of that. And no matter what they thought of "Yankee Doodle
Whitey," _he_ knew that he was loyal. Let them think that all his talk
of Uncle Job and the flag and his father's patriotism was just
bluff--let Frenchy think he had been just deceiving him--he could stand
anything, if only his brother would be like a brother to him now that
they were alone together.
It was a strange, unreasonable feeling.
Once, only once, in the long night, he tried to make his brother
understand.
"Maybe you won't believe me, but I'm sorry," he said; "if you ain't
asleep I wish you'd listen--Bill. Now that I told 'em I feel kind of
different--I _had_ to tell 'em. I had to decide quick--and I didn't
have nobody--anybody--to help me. Maybe you think I was crazy---- Are
you listenin'?"
There was no response, but he knew his brother was not asleep.
"It ain't because I wanted 'em to think I was smart--Bill--if you think
it was that, you're wrong. And anyway, it didn't show I was so
smart--you was smarter, anyway, if it comes to that. I got to admit it.
'Cause you thought about it first--about using the dish. It served me
right for thinking I could deduce, and all like that, anyway. You ain't
asleep, are you?"
"Aw, shut up!" his brother grunted. "You could 'a' kept me out o' this
by keepin' yer mouth shut. But you had to jabber it out, you----. And
they'll plug me full of lead."
A cold shudder ran through Tom.
"I got to admit I'm a kind of a (he was going to say _traitor_, but for
his brother's sake he avoided the word). I got to admit I wasn't loyal,
too. I wasn't loyal to you, anyway. But I had to decide quick, Bill. And
I saw I _had_ to tell 'em. You got to be loyal to Uncle Sam first of
all. But--but---- Are you listening, Bill? I ain't mad, anyway. 'Cause
Adolf Schmitt's most to blame. It ain't--it ain't 'cause I want to get
let off free either, it ain't. I wouldn't care so much now what they did
to me, anyway. 'Cause everything is kind of spoiled now about all of
us--our family--being so kind of patriotic----"
His brother, goaded out of his sullenness, turned upon him with a tirade
of profane abuse, leaving the boy shamed and silent.
And all the rest of that night Tom Slade, whose hand had extinguished
the guiding light, perhaps, to some lurking submarine; who had had to
"think quick and all by himself," and had decided for his Uncle Sam
against his brother Bill, sat there upon the leather settee, feeling
guilty and ashamed. He knew that he had done right, but his generous
heart could not feel the black, shameless treason of his brother because
his own smaller treason stood in the way. He could not see the full
guilt of that wretched brother because he felt mean and contemptible
himself. Truly, the soldier had hit the nail on the head when he said,
"You're all right, Whitey!"
And now, suspected, shamed, sworn at and denounced, even now, as his
generous nature groped for some extenuation for this traitor whose
scheme he had discovered and exposed, he found it comforting to lay the
whole blame and responsibility upon the missing Adolf Schmitt.
"Anyway, he tempted you," he said, though he knew his brother would
neither listen nor respond. "Maybe you think I don't know that. He's
worse than anybody--he is."
_You're all right, Whitey!_