Next morning’s Courier, which was Mr. Kenton’s choice among the Central City dailies, had a full half-column about the Vigilantes. The Courier was quite enthusiastic, and predicted that the end of bicycle stealing was in sight. It gave much credit to Warren Scott, referring to him as “the son of Mr. Lyman W. Scott, secretary of the Sproule-Gary Corporation, and one of Central City’s foremost citizens.” At the end of the article it briefly announced that the theft of two more bicycles had been reported to the police. Joe grinned when he reached that. “Maybe, though,” he reflected, as he hurried off, “the thieves hadn’t heard about the Vigilantes!” During the following week only one bicycle was reported missing. Whether this was due to the vigilance of the Vigilantes or to the fact that owners had pretty well learned their lesson and no longer parked their wheels beside the curb without locking them was a question. In any case, the papers commented favorably, praised the Vigilantes and the Police Department—all save the Evening Star,[60] which, opposed to the present city administration, inquired loudly why the police neither apprehended the thieves nor recovered any of the stolen property. Sam Sawyer was very full of the honor of his position of second chief of the Vigilantes and took his duties very seriously. To Joe he confided that, while the society had not so far actually caused any arrests or returned any stolen bicycles to their owners, it had undoubtedly to be credited with the sudden cessation of theft. With nearly a hundred fellows around the streets watching constantly, he pointed out there wasn’t much chance for the robbers.
The following Monday the papers announced that between Saturday evening and midnight on Sunday eleven complaints of bicycle thefts had reached police headquarters! Some bicycles had been stolen—locks and all—from the curb, some had been taken from yards and porches and one, belonging to a minister on the outskirts of town, had been removed from the church vestibule! The Courier had an impassioned editorial that morning on the subject of the revival of crime and the Star gloated and howled in big black headings and pointed an accusing finger in direction of Police Headquarters. Somewhat to his disappointment, Joe did not encounter Sam that day. Of course Joe deplored the thefts and was sorry for those who had lost their wheels, but he[61] was only human, and he was a little bit huffed because he had not been admitted to the Vigilantes.
It was nearly closing time on Tuesday when Burke, the store manager at the Central City Market, sought Joe in the shipping room. “There’s an order to go out to the North Side, Joe. None of the teams is going that way, so you’d better hustle out on your wheel. The name’s Jordan. Smithy’s putting it up now.”
Joe nodded. He didn’t relish the errand, however, for it had been raining all day and was still at it, and the North Side streets were none too good under the best of weather conditions. But he made no protest and sought Smithy. The address on the slip read “W. H. Jordan, Orcutt Road, 1 h’se beyond Drayton place.” Joe had to look in the directory in the office before he could locate Orcutt Road. The directory informed him that it ran west from Line Street in Bowker’s Addition. With such meager intelligence he set forth at a few minutes past five, his carrier weighted down with bundles.
It was a good twenty minutes journey to Line Street, the latter part of it through a dejected and even unsavory part of town, and, having reached that street, an unpaved thoroughfare sparsely inhabited by truck farmers in a small way, he sought further enlightenment. It was still raining desultorily and the street was deserted by pedestrians.[62] Finally he leaned his bicycle against a rickety fence and pushed through a gate beyond which a small dwelling, built largely of second-hand material, showed in the early twilight. The man who cautiously, even suspiciously, opened the unpainted door to him, proved to be Italian, and Joe had much difficulty in making his wants known. In the end, however, he learned that Orcutt Road was nearly a half-mile further on. The road was a veritable quagmire now, and he was frequently forced to dismount and push his bicycle through the muddy pools and over the uneven roadbed. Even the dwellings of the truck farmers ceased presently and the road—Joe had long since stopped referring to it as a street—stretched interminably away before him toward the darkening horizon with little to break its monotony save an occasional tree or group of bedraggled bushes. Eventually, though, a tumble-down farmhouse came into sight from under a slope of field well away from the road, and Joe decided that it must be the Drayton place. If it was, Orcutt Road could not be much further. Nor was it. Some fifty yards beyond the falling gate giving on to the farmhouse lane, an ill-defined wagon track led to the right and at its junction with the road a leaning post held a board bearing the nearly illegible inscription: “Orcutt Road.” Joe gave up the idea of riding the bicycle any further and detached[63] the laden carrier and set it on his shoulder. The Jordan residence was further along the grass-grown track than he had supposed, and he had to shift his burden more than once before the house came into sight.
It was a very humble dwelling, low, ancient, weathered, half hidden by a plantation of tall poplars doubtless planted many years ago as a windbreak. There were several outbuildings visible, all quite as unkept as the house itself. In one of them a light burned feebly, a lemon-yellow radiance in the gathering gloom. In the house there appeared to be no light at all until having turned from the uncertain road, he crossed a patch of grass and drew nearer. Then three things happened almost simultaneously: a dog barked ferociously from the direction of the house, a voice challenged from nearer at hand and a light sprang dimly into sight behind the narrow sidelights of the entrance.
“You from the store?” asked the voice.
A dark form sprang suddenly into view a dozen paces away and approached. So did the dog, a big black nondescript who growled menacingly as he bounded forward. “Get out o’ here, Gyp! Beat it or I’ll bounce a brick off your bean!” commanded the voice compellingly. Gyp stopped growling and began to sniff instead, circling around the visitor at a few yards’ distance.
[64]
“I’ve got an order here from the Central City Market for Jordan,” said Joe. “All right?”
“Sure,” answered the other. “Give it to me.” He proved to be a boy some two years older than Joe; perhaps eighteen. He was tall and broad-shouldered and uncouth. His clothes seemed too large for him and fell into strange wrinkles as he stepped close to take the wire basket. He wore no hat, and Joe found the fact oddly worrying him for the instant. Then, as he yielded the carrier and said, “Four dollars and thirty cents to pay, please,” he knew why.
“All right,” said the boy gruffly in his unpleasant voice, and started toward the rear of the house, Joe was following more slowly when the other turned. “You wait here,” he said in a threatening tone. “Watch him, Gyp.”
The dog growled and Joe stopped very still. For several minutes boy and dog stared at each other there in the rain and gloom, but Joe didn’t see Gyp at all. He saw, instead, a figure in a dark slouch hat bending over the handlebars of a shining purple bicycle, and although the hat was now wanting, he knew beyond the possibility of any doubt that the youth on the bicycle and the unpleasant-voiced boy who had disappeared beyond the corner of the house were one and the same.
His thoughts were interrupted by the return of[65] the boy with the empty carrier and the money. “Here you are, kid,” he grunted. “Now beat it.”
“Guess I’d better,” said Joe pleasantly. “It’s a long way out here, isn’t it? Gee, I was nearly bogged down getting along that road!”
“Well, why didn’t they send a team then?” demanded the other.
“There wasn’t any of them coming this way to-day. That’s a nice dog you’ve got,” Joe snapped his fingers invitingly, but Gyp only growled deeply. “Is he cross?”
“He don’t take to strangers,” answered the other gruffly. “Come here, Gyp. I’ll look after him till you’re out o’ the way, kid. Better get a move on.”
“All right. Good night,” said Joe. He turned back across the ragged and sodden lawn and gained the road. There he dared one brief backward look. Boy and dog still stood where he had left them, unmoving, silent, two dark forms in the falling darkness. The light in the house had gone, but that in one of the outbuildings—possibly a stable—had increased in brilliancy. Against its radiance a figure—two figures—moved, coming and going from sight across the square opening of a wide doorway. Then Joe brought his eyes back to the uneven road and floundered on toward the road and his bicycle.
His thoughts were very busy indeed as he pushed and pedaled his way home.
[66]
It was quite dark by the time he swung into his own street, and the infrequent lights left pockets of gloom between them. It was in one of these that a voice came to Joe above the swishing sound of his tires on the wet asphalt.
“Hey!” said the voice imperatively. “Hold up!”
Joe obeyed, coming to a halt as a dark figure detached itself from the deeper darkness across the street. The figure resolved itself into the burly form of a policeman who, joining the boy, peered suspiciously from him to the bicycle.
“What’s it?” asked Joe.
“Whose wheel is that?” demanded the officer gruffly.
“Mine,” replied Joe. “That is, it belongs to Donaldson and Burns. They let me use it.”
“What’s your name? Where do you live?”
Joe told him, explaining his errand and indicating the wire carrier as confirmatory evidence, and the officer grunted as though satisfied and went on. So did Joe, arriving home a minute later very wet and very hungry; and also secretly rather excited. He had difficulty getting to sleep that night.
The next morning three more bicycles were reported stolen and the papers carried an advertisement inserted by a hastily formed “Bicycle Dealers’ Association” offering a reward of one hundred dollars for information leading to the apprehension[67] and conviction of the thieves. Joe read that notice with a deal of interest. He would have liked a partner in his contemplated enterprise, but the only fellow he could think of was Sam, and there were reasons why Sam wouldn’t answer.
When he reached the store Joe sought Mr. Burke and asked to be allowed to leave a half hour earlier to-day. The manager objected from force of habit, but finally consented. At half-past four Joe begged some meat trimmings from the hand butcher, detached the parcel carrier from his bicycle and set off.
The afternoon was cloudy and chill, but rainless, as he followed his route of yesterday to within sight of the Drayton farm. There he concealed his wheel in a clump of bushes, climbed the fence and found himself in a meadow through which a dry brook meandered. It was still broad daylight and the problem of reaching the Jordan place unseen looked difficult. He dropped into the brook, however, and, well hunched over, began a cautious journey. The brook crossed the meadow by many turns toward a group of tumble-down outbuildings well away from the Drayton house. Reaching them at last, unchallenged, he abandoned concealment and passed behind them toward a fence a hundred yards distant. The fence was overgrown on both sides with trees and bushes and he had trouble breaking through. But when he had he was rewarded. A[68] quarter of a mile away to his left the Jordan house was in sight beyond a corner of the clustered outbuildings and between him and the latter stood a neglected orchard overgrown with tall weeds and littered with dead branches. Before proceeding he reassured himself by feeling of the packet of meat in his pocket. He was in far greater awe of Gyp than any of the human denizens.
Traversing the orchard was like playing Indian. Joe dodged from one tree to another, watching sharply the while. As he neared the outbuildings a sound reached him such as might be made by tapping a metal bar with a hammer, and although it ceased almost at once it proved that someone was close at hand, probably in that shed where he had yesterday seen forms moving to and fro. What he most dreaded to hear, the challenging bark of Gyp, didn’t disturb him. Behind the stable and sheds, which now completely hid the dwelling, lay a mass of discarded farm machinery, lumber and miscellaneous rubbish half hidden by grass and bushes. Three windows stared across at him. Of these, two were in the shed in the middle, perhaps once a carriage house, and the third, high up, was in the building on the extreme left. The stable, at the right of the row, was windowless at its rear. Joe was certain that the center building was the one in which he was to find an answer to his problem, and that[69] the answer would come to him by means of one of its two windows. To reach it, however, he must cross a good twenty yards of open space, and, while the shadows were gathering, it was not yet even twilight, and he hoped devoutly that no one—least of all Gyp—would be looking his way!
Of course he could wait for darkness, but then the shed might be deserted and unlighted and he would discover nothing. No, it was best to go ahead now and chance it. If he was discovered and pursued he could, he thought, trust his legs to get him out of danger. Taking a deep breath, he bent low and ran.