Billy also gloated over the portraits of well-known deputy sheriffs and other officers of the law printed in the same charming police paper. It seemed not too much to hope that his own likeness might one day grace that radiant page--himself in a long, fashionable overcoat, carelessly flung back to reveal the badge, with its never closing eye, and underneath, "William P. Durgin, the Dashing Young Detective, whose Coolness, Skill, and Daring have made his Name a Terror to Evil-Doers."
Famished for adventure, thirsting for danger, yearning for the perilous midnight encounter, avid of secrecy and disguises, Billy had been forced to toil prosaically, barrenly, unprofitably, about the sinless corridors of the City Hotel. All he had been able to do thus far was to regard every newcomer to the town with a steely eye of distrust; to watch each one furtively, to shadow him in his walks, and to believe during his sojourn that he might be "Red Mike, alias James K. Brown, wanted for safe-breaking at Muskegon, Michigan; reward, $1000," or some like desperado.
As such did he view them all--from the ornately garbed young man who came among us purveying windmills to the portly, broadclothed, gray-whiskered and forbiddingly respectable colporteur of the American Bible Society. Some day would his keen gray eye penetrate the cunning disguise; some day would he step quietly up to his man and say in low but deadly tones: "Come with me, now. Make no trouble or it will be the worse for you." Whereupon the guilty wretch would blanch and say in shaking voice: "My G.o.d, it"s Billy Durgin, the famous detective! Don"t shoot--I"ll come!"
Billy had faith that this dramatic episode would occur in the very office of the City Hotel, and he believed that some of those who had joked him about his life pa.s.sion would thereafter treat him in a very different manner.
Though I had long won these facts from Billy, I had never known him to play his game so openly before. But when I mentioned the thing to Solon, thinking to beguile him from his trouble, I found him more interested than I had thought he could be; for Solon knew Billy as well as I did,
"Did Billy follow you here?" he asked. "Perhaps he has a clew."
"A clew to what?"
"A clew to Potts. Billy volunteered to work up the Potts case, and I told him to go ahead."
"Was that fair, Solon, to pit a sleuth as relentless as Billy against poor Potts?"
"All"s fair in love and war."
"Is it really war?"
"You ask Westley Keyts if he thinks it"s love."
I think I noticed for the first time then that the Potts affair was etching lines into Solon"s face.
"Of course it"s war," he went on. "You know the fix I"m in. I had the plan to get Potts out. It was a good plan, too. The more I think of it the better I like it. With any man in the world but Potts that plan would have been a stroke of genius. But I don"t mind telling you that this thing has robbed me of sleep for three months. Potts has got me talking to myself. I wake up talking of him, out of the little sleep I do get. I"ll tell you the fact--if Potts is here six weeks longer, and let to finish this canvas, my influence in Sloc.u.m County is gone. I might as well give up and move on to another town myself, where my dreadful secret is unknown."
"Nonsense! But what can Billy Durgin do?"
"Well, I"m desperate, that"s all. And one night Billy had me meet him up by the cemetery--he came disguised in long black whiskers--and he told me that Potts was James Carruthers, better known to the police of two continents as "Smooth Jim," wanted for robbing the post-office at Lima, Ohio. Of course that"s nonsense. Potts hasn"t the wit to rob a post-office. But I didn"t have the heart to tell Billy so. I told him, instead, that this was the chance of his life; to fasten to Potts like an enraged leech, and draw out every secret of his dark past. You can"t tell--Billy might find something to pry him into the next county with, anyway."
"He certainly looked charged with information this afternoon. He was fizzing like an impatient soda fountain. But why did he follow me?"
"Well, that might be Billy"s roundabout way of getting to me. The other time he shadowed Marvin Chislett to get a message to me. If you"re a detective, you can"t do things the usual way, or all may be lost."
At that instant a low whistle sounded in our ears, a small missile was thrown over the evergreen hedge, bounding almost to our feet, and a slight but muscular figure was seen retreating swiftly into the dusk.
Solon sprang for the mysterious object. It was a stone, about which was wrapped a sheet of paper. This he took off and smoothed out. By the fading light we made out to read: "Meet me at graveyard steps at midnight. You know who."
We looked at each other. "Why didn"t he come in here?" I asked.
"That wouldn"t have been detective-like."
"But the graveyard at midnight!"
"Well, perhaps he won"t hold out for midnight--Billy is merely poetic at times--and maybe if we hurry along, we can catch up with him and have it out by the marble works there instead of going clear on to the cemetery.
Perhaps that will be near enough in the right spirit for Billy."
Quickly we made ready for the desperate a.s.signation, pulling our hats well down, in a way that we thought Billy would approve.
Four blocks along the street, by rapid walking, we came within hail of the intrepid young detective. We were also opposite the marble yard of Cornelius Lawson, who wrought monuments for the dead of Little Arcady.
In front of the shop were a dozen finished and half-finished stones, ghostly white in the dusk. It seemed indeed to be a spot impressive enough to meet even Billy"s captious requirements, but we had underrated the demands of his artist"s conscience. Solon called to him.
"Won"t this do, Billy?"
Billy stopped dramatically, turned back upon us, and then exploded:--
"Fools! Would you ruin all? You must not be seen addressing me. Now I must disguise myself."
Turning stealthily from us, he swiftly adjusted a beard that swept its sable flow down his youthful chest. Then he addressed us again, still in tense, hoa.r.s.e accents.
"Are you armed?"
"To the teeth!" answered Solon, with deadly grimness, and with a presence of mind which I envied.
"Then follow me, but at a distance!"
Meekly we obeyed. While our hero stalked ahead, stroking his luxuriant whiskers ever and anon, we pursued him at an interval so great that not the most alert citizen of Little Arcady could have suspected this sinister undercurrent to his simple life.
It is a long walk to the cemetery, but we reached it to find Billy seated on the steps that lead over the fence, still shielded by his hairy envelope.
"A tough case!" he whispered as we sat by him. "Our man has his spies out, and my every step is dogged both night and day."
"Indeed?" we asked.
"You know that slim little duck that got in last night, purtendin" he"s a shoe-drummer? Well, he"s a detective hired by Potts to shadow me. You know that big fat one, lettin" on he"s agent for the Nonesuch Duplex Washin" Machine? He"s another. You know that slick-lookin" cuss--like a minister--been here all week, makin" out he was canva.s.sin" for "The Scenic Wonders of Our Land" at a dollar a part, thirty-six parts and a portfoly to pack "em away in? Well, he"s an--"
"Hold on, Billy, let"s get down to business," reminded Solon.
"But I"ve throwed "em all off for the nonce," continued Billy, looking closely, I thought, to see if we were rightly affected by "nonce."
"Yes, sir, it"s been the toughest darned case in my whole experience as an inside man."
He waited for this to move us.
"What have you found out?" asked Solon; "and say, can"t you take off those whiskers, now that we are alone and un.o.bserved? You know they kind of scramble your voice."
With cautious looks all about him, Billy bared his tender young face to the night. A weak wind fretted in the cedars back of us, and an owl hooted. It was not an occasion that he would permit to glide by him too swiftly.
"Well, first I had to git my skeleton keys made."
"I thought you said his door was never locked," interrupted Solon.
"That might be only a ruse," suggested our hero. "Well, I got my keys made, and then I begun to search his room. That"s always a delicate job.
You got to know just how. First I looked under the aidges of the carpet, clear around. Nothing rewarded my masterly search. Then I examines the bed and mattress inch by inch, with the same discouragin" results."
Billy had now drifted fairly into the exciting manner of his favorite authors.
"Baffled, but not beaten, I nex" turns my attention to the pictures, examinin" with a trained eye the backs of same, where might be cunningly concealed the old will--uh--I mean the incriminatin" dockaments that would bring the craven wretch to bay and land him safely behind the bars of jestice. But it seemed like I had the cunning of a fiend to contend with. No objeks of interest was revealed to my swift but thorough examination. Thence I directed my attentions to the wall-paper, well knowin" the desperate tricks to which the higher cla.s.s of criminal will ofttimes resort to. Once I thought the game was up and all was lost.