A CHANGE OF PLANS
The day dawned cloudy and gray and when Skippy woke at eight o'clock he
looked in vain for a ray of heartening sunlight. Nothing but warm air
came in through the shutters and it was sticky and close.
Nickie sat up and stretched lazily. "Wow! What a headache, kid," he
said, rubbing his forehead. "How's yours, hah?"
"Bad as last night," Skippy answered mournfully. "We gotta expect
headaches in a hot, dark house like this, huh? Gee whiz, Nickie,
sump'n's gotta happen to get us outa here soon or I'll be like Timmy, I
guess. Here it's only the second mornin' an' I feel like it's a year."
Nickie was up and listening at the door while Skippy was talking.
"Where is he?" he asked, on the alert.
"Frost went downstairs most an hour ago, so don't worry. I heard him
walkin' an' walkin' round his room just like he had sump'n on his mind.
Then all of a sudden he comes out into the hall'n' locks his door like
he always does an' beats it downstairs. Sump'n must be up."
Skippy was right--something was up. They found out what it was when
they appeared in the kitchen for breakfast a few minutes later. Frost
was hurrying back and forth from the yard and down to the cellar
bearing pails of water from the pump outside.
"I'm putting five days' water supply in the crock down cellar," he
explained after his last trip. "Keep the cover on it tight like I'm
leaving it, and it'll stay fresh and cold. There's canned stuff and
other grub so you can feed and I'll show you how else you can manage
before I leave."
"You beatin' it?" Nickie asked.
"Mm," Frost murmured. His colorless eyes dropped before their gaze.
And, as if to change the subject, he asked: "D'ye know if them Greek
kids are awake?"
"No, we didn't hear a thing when we come down," Skippy answered
promptly. Then, out of a clear sky he hurled the query: "Why, you ain't
takin' 'em away, are you, Mr. Frost?"
Frost was disconcerted. "Why--er--sure!" he stammered. "I am! I--if
Dev--if Barker comes back--he should be here by Wednesday, tell him
there's a note in the room explainin' matters." He blinked his
colorless eyes, then added: "I'm lockin' you kids up for five days, but
I'm leavin' you the run of the house--that's how much I trust you!"
"Says you!" Nickie sneered.
Points of color appeared upon Frost's cheeks. He glared at Fallon and
asked, "What d'ye mean, hey?"
"Ain't them ears pinned on your head?" was Nickie's retort. "It looks
like we're trusted with bars all over the joint an' even on the cellar
winders, hah? It looks like we're trusted when the bars ain't even
enough, so you hadda padlock all the shutters too. Yeah, that stuff
goes for Sweeny."
"That's Dev--Barker's idea--not mine--get me? Anyway, I ain't got no
time to argue. We'll hash it over when I get back," Frost snapped.
He turned, went upstairs and Nickie proceeded with the making of
coffee. Skippy got a package of bacon from the cupboard and silently
set about the task of frying it. Words wouldn't come--he could do
nothing but listen and wait. For what, he didn't know.
When Shorty and Biff came downstairs and back to the kitchen they were
their usual smiling selves. Nickie looked from his coffee pot to them
and Skippy's eyes traveled back and forth from their round faces to the
briskly frying bacon.
"Frost tell you he's beatin' it with you guys this morning?" Nickie
asked.
"Sure," Biff smiled.
"And you ain't nervous or nothin', hah?" Nickie asked, amazed that Biff
could smile.
"Nah. The queecker we go, the queecker comes the time we sneak home."
"We theenk maybe we tell dees Frost we rather not go to Peetsburgh or
Maine or what it ees he wants to take us," Shorty spoke up. "We theenk
we ask heem to take us home so we can say hello, then we go Delafield.
Maybe they lop off time for us too 'cause we come back, eh?"
"Maybe," Skippy said in a small voice.
"You never can tell," Nickie said, his eyes staring into space.
They ate in silence, a strange oppressive silence, and Skippy felt
almost glad when Frost's hurried steps sounded on the stairs. If it had
to be, it was better to have it over now than to endure the tension of
waiting and living in dread.
A smile and a handclasp and they were gone. Nickie and Skippy stood
listening as Frost locked the woodshed door from the outside. When the
car chugged softly outside they made no attempt to go to the windows
and look. Neither one moved an inch until the sound of the motor had
ceased to echo in the clearing.
"If I thought Frost didn't have no gun, I'd jumped him," said Nickie at
last. "But catch him and Devlin in a racket like this without carryin'
rods, hah?"
Skippy was again reminded of Carlton Conne's assurance that Dean Devlin
was not the gun-toting kind of criminal. The boy had no doubt but that
that had been true of Devlin once, but not now. Too, the detective had
said that Devlin was after people's money--not people. In the light of
what Skippy now knew, that also was no longer true. Devlin had
evidently made rapid strides in criminality. He had taken on a partner
and whatever his mystery racket was, the fact that he trafficked in
these convicted boys, evidently for gain, robbed him completely of the
superficial glamour his adventurous life might have previously given
him.
"Say, Nickie," Skippy said at length, "we got five days here alone an'
if we can't do a Houdini in that time we're a coupla bums."
Nickie's face became radiant. "Gotta plan, kid?"
"I gotta hunch maybe we can work loose a coupla bars in some window! If
we can't find a crowbar, maybe we'll find sump'n else, huh? We'll start
down cellar right away."
"You said it, kid!" Nickie was enthusiastic. "And when we scram outa
this drum, I'll say like Biff and Shorty, we'll go home'n' say hello
an' then tell the dicks we're reportin' for Delafield."
Skippy thought of an old saying of his aunt's about an ill wind blowing
someone some good. Timmy, the Greeks, and now Nickie all seemed to lose
their defiance of the law under Devlin's evil roof. If it took an evil
to cure an evil then their contact with the arch criminal had not been
entirely in vain.