Blacksheep! Blacksheep! by Meredith Nicholson (best books for students to read TXT) 📕

Congdon was a name of evil omen. What business could Isabel have with that unhappy lady that would cause her to delay her departure for the West? His intimations that Putney Congdon might be dead had filled her with horror, and yet she had hinted at his sister's dinner that the taking of human life was a small matter. That a girl so wholly charming and persuasive at a dinner table could be so stern and unreasonable at a chance meeting afterward, shook his confidence in her sex, which that memorable meeting had done much to establish upon firm ground. He had been wholly stupid and tactless in pouncing upon her with what he realized, under the calming influences of the brisk sea air, must have struck her as the vaporings of a dangerous lunatic. He had never been clever; he smarted now under the revelation that all things considered he was an immitigable ass.

He went back to the hotel bitter but fortified by a resolution that nothing should check him now in his desperate career. He had quarreled with the inspiration of his new life, but in the end Isabel should have reason to know how unjust she had been. It was something after all to have seen her, perplexed, anxious and angry though she had been. She was still the most wonderful girl he had ever met, the more remarkable for the fact that now she had gone he had not the slightest idea of what had brought her into the strange world inhabited by the quarreling and fleeing Congdons. But men had suffered before for love of woman and he would bear his martyrdom manfully, keeping the humiliating interview carefully from the Governor.

The Governor returned from Hoky's funeral somewhat wistful, but he described the burial with his accustomed enthusiasm.

"It will be one of the satisfactions of my life that I went," he declared. "They didn't have the decency to bring in a minister—fancy it! Blessed if I didn't step into the breach and make a few remarks myself! I did, indeed, Archie, right there in the undertaker's joint, with a lot of bumpkins staring! No man sinks so low that he hasn't got some good in him; that was the burden of my argument. The sheriff came up and wrung my hand when it was all over. He had heard my little sermon and I suppose thought I was some rich and influential philanthropist; so I let it go at that."

The next morning he announced Cornford as their next stopping point, a town, he explained, whose history thrust far back into colonial times. When they were seated in the parlor car he tossed a bundle of magazines into Archie's lap.

"It will amuse you to know that one of the policemen we met on the road looking for Hoky's accomplice is standing on the platform. He's just inspected the day coaches;—never occurs to him that knaves of our degree travel de luxe."

He yawned as the train started and drew a small volume from his pocket.

"I shall lose myself in old Horatius Flaccus for an hour. It's odd but I always do my best concentrating with a poet before me. And what you said yesterday about those new bank notes Leary has hid up here disturbed me just a little. You can't trust fellows of old Leary's type with a matter so delicate as launching new money, where the numbers, as you so sagely remarked, are being looked for by every bank teller in America. I have a hunch that something unusual will happen before the summer's over, and we must be primed for every emergency."

Archie saw that it was really a volume of the Horatian odes in which his singular companion had become engrossed. The Governor was utterly beyond him and he stared out moodily at the flying landscape, hating himself cordially as he thought of Isabel Perry and living over again the exciting moments in the Congdon house that preluded this strange journeying with a scholarly criminal who evidently derived the deepest satisfaction from the perusal of Latin poetry. The Governor broke in upon his reflections occasionally to read him a favorite passage or to ask questions, flattering to Archie's learning, as to possible interpretations of the venerated text.

The Cornford Inn proved to be a quaint old tavern, modernized, and its patrons, the Governor explained, were limited to cultivated people who sought the peace and calm of the hills. After a leisurely luncheon they took their coffee in a pleasant garden on one side of the house.

"One might be in France or Italy," remarked the Governor, lighting a cigar. "An ideal place; socially most exclusive, and I trust we shall have no reason to regret our visit."

"That depends," said Archie, inspecting the end of his cigarette, "on whether we are transferred to the county jail or not."

"Your apprehensions are as absurd as they are groundless, my dear boy. We could cash checks for any reasonable sum in this caravanserai merely on our appearance as men of education and property. Even in stolen clothes you look like a capitalist."

Two men came into the garden and seated themselves at a table on the other side of a screen of shrubbery. They ordered coffee and one of them remarked upon the recent prevalence of crime in New England.

"A thief was shot at Bailey Harbor night before last and there seems to be a band of crooks operating all along the coast."

"We need a better type of men in Congress," said the Governor in a loud tone, with a wink at Archie. "There's a steady deterioration in the quality of our representatives in both houses."

"You are right," Archie responded, remembering with a twinge of conscience his congressman brother-in-law.

The Governor nodded to Archie to keep on talking, while he played the rôle of eavesdropper.

"You oughtn't to have carried that cash up here," came in a low tone from the hedge. "The old man is a fool or he wouldn't have suggested such a thing."

"Well, he wrote that he was coming here to spend a week and in his characteristic fashion said if I wanted his stock I could bring the currency here and close the transaction. The Congdons are all a lot of cranks, you know. This old curmudgeon carries a small fortune around with him all the time, and never accepts a check in any transaction."

The Governor grew more eloquent in his attempt to convince Archie of the decadence of American statesmanship, while their unseen neighbors, feeling themselves secure, continued their discussion of the errand that had brought them to Cornford.

"You're paying the old skunk a big price for his shares!"

"Well, I've got to to keep them out of hostile hands," said the second voice irritably. "I don't like the idea of carrying yellowbacks around in a satchel just to humor a lunatic. And he's had the nerve to write that he won't be here until tomorrow!"

"But the cash—"

"Oh, it's all safe enough. No one knows but that I'm here just for a rest."

"Let's stroll about a little," said the Governor. "We're not getting our usual amount of exercise and there's a good bit of colonial history tucked away in Cornford."

He led the way through the garden to the street, and bade Archie proceed slowly to the post office while he walked toward the main entrance of the inn.

Archie was buying stamps for which he had no immediate use when the Governor joined him.

"These chaps were quite providentially in the office calling for their keys so I had no trouble in identifying them. Seebrook and Walters are the names. Seebrook, the older chap, has his daughter with him. They have rooms on the floor below us."

"You don't think they've got any considerable sum of money with them, do you?" asked Archie breathlessly.

"That remains to be seen! Did you notice their reference to a man named Congdon? Singular how I keep running into members of that tribe. I'm beginning to think there's a fatality in the name!"

Archie glanced at him covertly. He too felt that there was something decidedly strange in the way the name haunted him, but the Governor had picked up a local guide book and was pointing out objects of interest as they wended their way along the street. Archie's wits had never been so taxed as since he had fired a pistol, more or less with intent to kill, in the house of Putney Congdon, but it was incredible that the Governor could know aught of that matter. The Governor, however, was manifesting the greatest interest in Cornford history, halting citizens to propound inquiries as to landmarks, and pausing before the town hall to make elaborate notes of a tablet struck in memory of the first selectmen.

When they reached the green, which the town's growth had left to one side, he sat down on a bench and directed attention to a church whose history he read impressively from the book.

"That carries us back quite a way beyond the Revolution. No longer used but reverently preserved for its associations. And in the cellar of that simple edifice where the early colonists used to hide from predatory Indians, is hidden fifty thousand dollars. A suitcase all ready to snatch, thrust under the bin where the worshipers of old kept the Sunday wood!"

"I suppose it might rot there and nobody be the wiser?" muttered Archie, glancing at the venerable meeting house with awakened interest.

"Quite true! But it must be saved from destruction. We mustn't fail Leary; he's put his trust in me. It's our job to recover the funds, and if I never ask you to join me in anything more perilous you'll have occasion to congratulate yourself. There are two automobiles at the church door now—tourists, having a look at the relic, and their presence will neatly cover our visit."

They found half a dozen visitors roaming through the church, opening and closing the doors of the old pews. Archie was accosted by a stout lady in quest of just the information he had gained from the guide book. He courteously answered her questions and found the other sightseers pressing round to share in his lecture on the Cornford meeting house. When he had imparted everything he knew and added a few fanciful touches to improve the story, he turned to look for the Governor.

"If you want to see the cellar, don't tumble down the steps as I did," called a cheery voice from the entry; "it's an abominable hole!"

Being an abominable hole the visitors laughingly surged toward the door to explore it, and the Governor struck matches to light their descent.

He brushed the dust from his knees and mopped his face until the voices below receded.

"All safe and sound! Stuck it out through a back window into a lilac bush, and we'll pick it up at our leisure. You may not have noticed that this old pile is built up against an abandoned mill. We shall loiter back to the inn carrying the loot quite boldly with us. You might lug it yourself as I'm a little warm from digging the thing up—Leary had burrowed under the wood bin and hidden it for keeps."

To be sauntering in broad daylight through the principal thoroughfare of a serene New England town carrying a suitcase filled with