TIME
Tom got a lift to Kingston and here he weakened. He would wait a little
before calling at a police station. They would probably be busy just
then; he did not tell himself why. He strolled about the hot, parched
city, watched the traffic, looked in shop windows. In many of these,
newspapers had been spread over the goods to protect them from the
merciless sun, and he read the headings of stale news—anything to give
him an excuse not to hurry.
He paused and looked at churches and public buildings. He watched a man
lettering a name on a window. He loitered to examine a Ford tractor
outside a hardware store, and he inspected some axes and spades which
stood in an empty flour barrel. They spoke of the mountains and reminded
him of the fraternal little group up there. He thought of those three,
his good friends, lowering the pole into the earth. They would be
sitting around eating their lunch by then....
A Ford business car with SHADYSIDE DAIRY printed on it stopped, and an
aggressive looking young fellow with red hair swung out of it, hustled
into the hardware store and out again. He had a handkerchief tucked in
around his neck in deference to the heat.
“Where’s the police headquarters?” Tom asked him.
“Well, you go down three blocks—jump in, I’m going that way.”
“Some heat,” said the young fellow as they rode along the bricked
thoroughfare. “If we don’t get some rain pretty soon there’s going to be
trouble. _Whew_, but it’s hot. There’s a lot of wells drying up where I
come from.”
“You belong here?” Tom asked.
“Near Catskill.”
“You going there?”
“Yop.”
“I’ll go along if you don’t mind.”
The young fellow glanced at Tom rather curiously, which was natural,
seeing that he had asked for police headquarters and ended by wanting to
go to Catskill. But he did not trouble himself further with the ins and
outs of such a matter.
“Did you think I was going to give myself up?” Tom laughed. It was a
nervous, forced laugh.
The young fellow seemed not to care for he only said, “Look at that
blamed radiator steam, will you? That’s the worst of a Ford. Puts you in
mind of a geyser. Can you beat it?”
“You’ll have to put in some water,” said Tom. “They’ll be charging for
water pretty soon, I’m thinking, if this blamed weather keeps up.”
Tom’s suddenly revised plan was to go to Temple Camp for the night. He
wanted to visit camp and so far as Whalen was concerned a day one way or
the other wouldn’t make any difference. Then, as he got to thinking, he
realized the dilemma he was in. How could he go back up the mountain? He
certainly wouldn’t accompany the detectives there and witness the arrest
of his friend. Yet he had not said that he would not return. Was he,
then, to be like all the other irresponsible, undependable recruits who
had deserted Ferris?
Well, anyway, he would spend the night at Temple Camp, then in the
morning he would go down to Kingston by train and call at police
headquarters there. He would feel fresh in the morning. And so on and so
on....
He was aroused out of his musing by his companion’s voice, “I came near
getting held up on this road one night, came near being touched for
three hundred bills. But I got by with Lizzie all right. I had to laugh;
they got a blow-out. Did I duck! I thought it was a gun.”
“I guess there are a lot of hold-ups,” Tom said. His interest was only
passive, his mind preoccupied and troubled.
The young fellow rattled on, “There was a big truck along here last
night—broke down. Some load of hootch, oh boy!”
“Yes?” said Tom in a way of half-interest.
“I’ll say so. One case was all over the road—puddles, broken glass—I
gave ’em the lend of a wrench.”
“Did you report them?” Tom asked.
“_Naaah_, I should worry. I wouldn’ do the bulls out of a job. I never
kidnap nobody else’s job.”
Tom seemed interested. Here, at last, was a unique view of law breaking
and of detecting and apprehending.
“Not for mine,” said the young fellow. “That’s what we pay ’em for and
they’re loafin’ most of the time.”
Tom reflected. Here was a young fellow, evidently honest. He could be
trusted with three hundred dollars. He seemed to be a wholesome, right
thinking young fellow. Yet he would not report what he had seen. Was he
really an accomplice then? He seemed very rough and crude and vulgar in
contrast to Audry Ferris....
“Yer goner get out at Catskill?” he asked.