“Well?”
“‘Bill Gregg?’ she says. ‘I
don’t remember any such name!’
“That took the wind out of me. I only had
enough left to say: ’The gent that was
writing those papers to the correspondence school to
you from the West, the one you sent your picture to
and—’
“‘Sent my picture to!’ she says
and looks as if the ground had opened under her feet.
‘You’re mad!’ she says. And
then she looks back over her shoulder as much as to
wish she was safe back in her house!”
“D’you know why she looked back over her
shoulder?”
“Just for the reason I told you.”
“No, Bill. There was a gent standing up
there at a window watching her and how she acted.
He’s the gent that kept her from writing to you
and signing her name. He’s the one who’s
kept her in that house. He’s the one that
knew we were here watching all the time, that sent
out the girl with exact orders how she should act
if you was to come out and speak to her when you seen
her! Bill, what that girl told you didn’t
come out of her own head. It come out of the head
of the gent across the way. When you turned your
back on her she looked like she’d run after
you and try to explain. But the fear of that fellow
up in the window was too much for her, and she didn’t
dare. Bill, to get at the girl you got to get
that gent I seen grinning from the window.”
“Grinning?” asked Bill Gregg, grinding
his teeth and starting from his chair. “Was
the skunk laughing at me?”
“Sure! Every minute.”
Bill Gregg groaned. “I’ll smash every
bone in his ugly head.”
“Shake!” said Ronicky Doone. “That’s
the sort of talk I wanted to hear, and I’ll
help, Bill. Unless I’m away wrong, it’ll
take the best that you and me can do, working together,
to put that gent down!”
A Bold Venture
But how to reach that man of the smile and the sneer,
how, above all, to make sure that he was really the
power controlling Caroline Smith, were problems which
could not be solved in a moment.
Bill Gregg contributed one helpful idea. “We’ve
waited a week to see her; now that we’ve seen
her let’s keep on waiting,” he said, and
Ronicky agreed.
They resumed the vigil, but it had already been prolonged
for such a length of time that it was impossible to
keep it as strictly as it had been observed before.
Bill Gregg, outworn by the strain of the long watching
and the shock of the disappointment of that day, went
completely to pieces and in the early evening fell
asleep. But Ronicky Doone went out for a light
dinner and came back after dark, refreshed and eager
for action, only to find that Bill Gregg was incapable
of being roused. He slept like a dead man.
