Chapter V: Part 5

"Three hundred dollars. He drew it out yesterday to send to his sister and carried it in a hip pocket. That's the pocket in which the organ-grinder put the note. The money's gone."

The blind man's head was thrown back; Joe saw the lips strained and tight once more. Captain Tucker came out of the house, slowly.

"Bad news," he blurted. "Our man fooled us. Wasn't on the train; slipped off at one of the way stations."

Mr. Foster swayed unsteadily. "Don't," he begged hoarsely, "tell Billy's mother."

The policeman walked down the driveway with the doctor. "That Italian may have left the train a station or two out, and come back for the boy. I've ordered every road out of the village guarded."

Joe came away with a choking lump in his throat. The blind man, holding the harness and walking close to the dog, whistled an almost soundless whistle. The boy knew, by this sign, that the brain behind the sightless eyes had caught a glimmer of light.

Suddenly, without warning, the apple-scented peace of the night was broken by a flash and a roar. A whistling whine filled the air.

"Drop!" Dr. Stone cried.

Not until he lay prone in the road did the boy grasp the significance of flash and roar. Somebody had fired on them from ambush. A shuddering chill ran up his spine, and sweat stood out upon his forehead. The moon-splashed world was silent again, and faintly to his nostrils came the drift of burnt powder.

Dr. Stone stood up. "Another shot," he called clearly, "and I'll send the dog to tear you down. Come, Joe."

Quaking, Joe stood up. They moved ahead again, and the boy's nerves were torture-tight as he waited for another flash and roar. But the silence remained unbroken and they came at last to the welcome protection of home.

The boy's voice trembled. "Why did the organ-grinder come back and shoot at us?"

"That bullet," Dr. Stone said grimly, "was intended for Lady, not for us." His hand fell upon the dog's head. "Old girl, somebody's afraid you know too much."

In the chill dark of the following morning the boy and the man gulped hot coffee in the kitchen. Arising from the table Dr. Stone walked to a desk in the hall, took out a small first-aid kit, and slipped it into a pocket. Then man, boy and dog were out in the road, when the first golden streak was faint in the eastern sky.

Captain Tucker's car stood in the driveway. Mr. Foster looked as though he had not slept. Ira Close, his right hand wrapped in a handkerchief, went about small chores.

Dr. Stone said: "Could Ira get Lady a drink, Foster?"

Ira brought water in a pan. The blind man, shifting the leash, stumbled against the dog and tottered. Joe, with a cry of alarm, sprang forward. But the doctor's arms, outstretched, had gone around the hired man; they slipped along the stout body, down, down--. He caught himself and stood erect. Ira Close swore morosely and swung an arm.

"That finger?" Dr. Stone asked, concerned. "I warned you. Why didn't you have a doctor see it?"

"I fixed it myself."

"Nonsense. Here; give it to me."

After a moment of hesitation the hand was held out. Joe watched his uncle's fingers move as though they had eyes. The tweezers came out of the kit. Abruptly the doctor's body was between him and the throbbing wound.

"Fever in here," the blind man said; "infected." Ira Close cried aloud. Joe glimpsed a corner of his uncle's face, intent, strained; then there was the drip of iodine, and Dr. Stone stepped back. The blind eyes were bland and serene.

"Have Mrs. Foster bandage it," he said.

Ira went into the house. The kitchen door slammed shut, and immediately tranquility left the doctor.

"Tucker, stay here. Joe, this way. A few minutes, Foster; just a few minutes."

Back where the broken plate had lain yesterday, Dr. Stone unhooked the leash and gave the dog the scent of the cap.

"Lady, find," he urged. The tawny dog, as though puzzled by the absence of the leash, looked up inquiringly. "Find," the man said again.

Lady, nose down, padded toward the orchard.

"Take me back, Joe."

The boy had the feeling that they hung in air. Ira Close came out of the house with a finger freshly bandaged. Captain Tucker gave an exclamation of surprise.

"Doctor! Where's the dog?"

Lady made her own answer. From some place in the near distance they heard her deep-toned, full-throated, insistent bark.

"Foster," Dr. Stone said quietly, "I think Lady has found your boy."

Two men began to run--Foster toward the orchard, Ira Close toward the road. To Joe Morrow the world whirled and spun. Dr. Stone cried, "Look out, Tucker; he has a gun." The policeman leaped, and the hired man went down. With amazing quickness brawny arms turned Ira over, and the first shaft of sunlight glinted on a blue barrel.

"See if there are two exploded cartridges," the doctor called.

Captain Tucker broke the gun. "Two," he said. "What does this mean, Doctor?"

"It means you have your kidnaper."

And so it came that Ira Close, snarling and venomous, sat handcuffed in Captain Tucker's police car.

"Where's the boy, Doctor?"

"In the barn, most likely. Not a bad idea, was it? Snatch the boy and hide him away three hundred feet from his home. Who'd think of looking for him there? Why should anybody look for him there when the hue and cry had gone out for an organ-grinder who had disappeared after trying to disguise himself?

"Why did Ira do it? You'll have to ask him. The papers have been full of kidnapings and ransoms. Probably, with a greed for money, he'd been turning the thing in his mind for a long time. Then came the organ-grinder, and that brought inspiration. But there was one point, Tucker, you failed to take into account, and that was why I was not surprised to learn the Italian had boarded the train alone. A man, fleeing after a crime, does not shave off his mustache and leave the clipped hairs behind him to advertise his disguise.

"Ira snapped Billy up yesterday afternoon. The boy had never liked him; there was a momentary struggle. The signs of it lay upon the ground. Probably he hid the boy in the barn loft and gagged him. With the coming of night there was alarm in the Foster home. 'Ira, go see if you can find Billy!' He had anticipated that command. And so he went forth, and managed to run a noose up his arms, and came back with the note and a cock-and-bull story. He was loosely tied. Did you ever see a captive who was not tied tightly? For this Italian to tie Ira, a taller man, he would have to put away his gun. Can you picture 185-pound Ira allowing a 135-pound stripling, no longer flourishing a pistol, to wind him with a rope? It didn't hold together.

"Nor was that the only point where the story didn't hold together. Ira made positive identification of the organ-grinder. He identified him through a foreign accent. But he said nothing of a previous meeting until Joe told of seeing them in conversation. Where had that conversation been held? Outside the bank. Not significant in itself, but strikingly significant when we find Ira suddenly announcing to Foster that he had drawn three hundred dollars from the bank to send to his sister and that it had been stolen from his pocket.

"What's your guess about that three hundred dollars, Tucker? Mine is that it went to the organ-grinder. The Italian is guilty of no wrong. All he knows is that a stranger offered him three hundred dollars to shave off his mustache, abandon his organ and monkey, disappear quietly and leave the train before reaching the station for which he had purchased a ticket. Why did Ira tell us about the three hundred dollars? What's your guess, Tucker? Mine is that he was suddenly touched with a cold fear. The withdrawal of the money was a matter of record at the bank. The money was taken out the day of the kidnaping, the day of the organ-grinder's disappearance. These facts might have given rise to a few unpleasant questions."

Joe, breathless, looked at Captain Tucker. The policeman frowned doubtfully.

"How about that shot in the finger, Doctor? Do you mean he shot himself?"

"What's your guess?" Dr. Stone asked mildly. "Mine is that, when he was sent out to look for Billy, he fired a shot in the air as an after-thought. Do you remember, when we got there, that his hand pained? He kept rubbing it as though it throbbed. Infection doesn't set in so quickly, Captain; there must be a period of incubation. He had cut that finger earlier in the day. He objected to going to a doctor even after I warned him of lock-jaw. Why? Because he didn't fear the lock-jaw that may follow a gun-shot wound. Because he knew that no doctor would look at that wound and believe it came from a bullet. Of course, he let me handle it; but, then, I am blind. He figured I didn't count. My guess is that, in running the rope over his arms, he reopened a wound he had received earlier in the day."

"By the Eternal," Captain Tucker burst out, "this seems to be nothing but guesses. You guess this and you guess that. How about a few facts. We have placed this man in irons. If Billy isn't found you and I may discover ourselves in a sweet peck of trouble."

A voice called from the house: "Captain Tucker! Telephone."

The captain mounted the porch steps. The doctor, fishing out his pipe, methodically stuffed it with tobacco.

"I can't understand," he said musingly, "why you didn't light out last night, Ira, after trying to shoot Lady. Afraid to run and lose five thousand dollars, and afraid to stay and be caught. You were in one sweet peck of trouble, weren't you, Ira?" Ira said nothing.

"How were you going to work it? Collect the money and then get word to them where to find the boy?"

The hired man glared in impotent fury.

Captain Tucker, looking slightly dazed, came back to the car. "They picked up our Italian in a small village fifteen miles above Peekskill."

"Search him, Captain?"

"Of course."

"Did they," the doctor asked mildly, "find three hundred dollars in his pocket?"

"Three hundred dollars to the penny in one roll." The captain fanned his face with his uniform cap. Abruptly the motion of the cap stopped. "Look here, Doctor; you said you found the first clew in that injured hand."

"The first clew and the last," the doctor told him.

"The last? Did you find something else when you dressed that finger a little while ago?"

The blind man puffed serenely on the pipe. "I found a nasty cut and something foreign imbedded in the cut. It had set up the infection; I could feel it under the pressure of my fingers. I took it out with the tweezers. Something hard and gritty, Captain. I haven't seen it; it's safely stowed away in my pocket. But I'll stake my soul it's a chipped splinter from a broken blue plate."

At that moment Joe Morrow saw Lady and Mr. Foster emerge from the orchard, and the man carried a small boy in his arms.

* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

--The copyright notice from the printed edition was preserved,
although this book is in the public domain in the country of
publication.

--Typographical errors were corrected without comment.

--Nonstandard spellings and dialect were not changed.