Adventure stories; Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Camps -- Juvenile fiction
No one was there. Hervey looked out upon the dissolving night; already
the familiar scene was emerging in the gray drawn--the white rail fence,
the gravel walk with its bordering whitewashed stones, the big
whitewashed tub that caught the rain-water from the roof trough. He
smelled the mist. There was no one anywhere about; no sound but the slow
dripping into the tub. Drop, drop, drop; it was from the rain of two or
three days ago. How audible it was in the stillness! He crept upstairs
again and went to bed. But he did not sleep. He wished that dreadful
satchel were off his hands. Over a hundred dollars!
He arose in the morning before the household was astir and stole out
with his guilty burden. He knew that Kipp’s Railroad Lunch was open all
night and that it had a telephone. He would look in the telephone book
for Manners. That way he would find the address. He thought of leaving
the satchel at the Manners’ door, ringing the bell, and running away.
The recovery of the money would end the trouble. But suppose the satchel
should be stolen again--not _again_; but suppose it should be stolen? Of
course, it had not been stolen before.... Just the same he was desperate
to get it off his hands.
Things looked strange about the station so early in the morning; there
were so few people to be seen, and no shops open. Somehow the very
atmosphere imparted a guilty feeling to Hervey. He felt a little like a
fugitive.
He could not find the name of Manners in the ’phone book and thus
baffled, he felt nervous. For while he was losing time, the victim and
the authorities were probably not wasting any time. He thought he would
wait in the station a little while and try to decide what to do. He knew
that the family of Denny Crothers, a scout, was identified with the big
white church. There was an idea! Denny would know where Horton Manners
lived, or could soon find out. Perhaps he might even take Denny into his
confidence. It is worth considering that in his extremity he was willing
not only to use, but to trust, this scout whose troop he had repudiated.
Well, he would sit in the station a little while (it was still very
early) and if he could not think of any other plan, he would go to
Denny’s house. It would seem strange to the Crothers, seeing him there
so early. And it would seem stranger still to Denny to be approached by
an arch enemy. But Hervey’s troubled thoughts could not formulate any
better plan.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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