CHAPTER XV
That night the Wolfes’ Matilda was in her element. Mrs. Wolfe had returned, and as soon as she heard what had been going on, she insisted on inviting the three Secret Service men who had been around with the boys, to come to her house and celebrate, and (perhaps to be sure of hearing everything about the affair that was closing so successfully) she asked Eddie to supper with the rest of the “plotters” as she called them. And because she knew that the participants would want an audience, she asked Frank’s chum Walter Fletcher, who lived next door, to come and help Mr. Wolfe and her with the listening. So Matilda cooked and cooked, and when the hungry guests sat down everybody cheered up after one look at the loaded table. When half-way through, they had reached a state of dangerous appreciation, and with dessert Walter declared that Matilda deserved the distinguished service medal, and Mrs. Wolfe a place in the Hall of Fame.
After dinner they all went out on the screened-in porch and talked and talked, and told the tale over and over.
“Zipousky, or whatever his name is, is a queer pill,” said the Major. “Actually, he would not harm Dee, yet he spent his life making bombs and spreading propaganda. There is enough evidence against him to keep him in prison for the next ninety years.”
“Why, the dub thought that just as soon as we had taken down his declaration, we would drop him at the doctor’s and bid him a fond farewell. He went on like a madman when he found himself at the station, and told me I had lied to him.”
“Where is he now?” asked Mrs. Wolfe.
“At the Infirmary at the jail. Under guard, too. We don’t want anything to happen to him. He is too valuable a witness. I think he would kill himself if he found a chance, but two men are watching him night and day.
“We sent the other Secret Service men back to headquarters, with copies of the lists, and couriers are being dispatched in airplanes to all cities noted. It will be a great scoop.”
“Did you have a scrap when you arrested the three men and the woman at the Seelbach?” asked Walter.
“Only one man tried to put up a fight,” said the detective. “The big one who drove the car out to Knox. We went up to the room and knocked. The lady in the case called, 'Come,’ and we two went in. We simply grabbed her before she could do anything, and put the bracelets on her. My, but she was mad! She never said a word, but if looks could kill we would all have been dead. She was alone, and we shut the door and waited, after warning her to keep still.
“Presently someone came down the hall. The carpet is so thick that you could not hear footsteps, but we heard the key-check jangle. And the woman started to let out a yell. We beat her to it, and gagged her. Then we waited awhile longer, first moving her chair around where it could not be seen from the door.
“After awhile someone came to the door and came in. It was the thin man, and we stacked him up beside the lady. All at once I noticed her little foot tapping the floor, and there she was sending messages right under our noses. Then I put the anklets on her and, to make sure, placed a cushion under her feet. It wasn’t long before the other two whom we expected came along. We were ready for them with revolvers, but the big one wanted to fight the worst way.
“The management didn’t want us to take a bunch of prisoners out the front, so we had to take them down the freight elevator. It seems they have been splurging round the hotel for six weeks, the woman wearing wonderful clothes, and the men posing as oil men from the west.”
“Where are they now?” asked someone.
“Safe in a nice tight cell, each of them,” said the detective, smiling. “And far enough apart so they can’t tap out any messages to each other. We went through their luggage, of course, and found all sorts of things. Sulphuric acid, and caps and fuses, and what not, and you should have seen the diamonds the woman had! All sorts of pins and bracelets in boxes in her trunk and a chamois bag fastened in her dress with ten or twelve rings, all worth at least five hundred dollars apiece. I suppose she was afraid of going broke somewhere. You can always get cash out of perfect stones. Either that, or else she was going to make a getaway to South America or Mexico after the thirteenth.”
“It is pretty tough for you, youngster,” said the detective, laying a sympathetic hand on Dee’s shoulder, “pretty tough to have this happen to the man you have always thought was your own father.”
“I don’t know,” said Dee. “I am glad you mentioned it. There has always been something funny about that. I have never liked him. I hated it when he leaned on my arm when we walked around the Park. I always distrusted him, and yet I didn’t. He walked feebly and leaned on me hard, but his touch felt strong.
“I used to hate myself for feeling the way I did, because of course I thought he was my own father. And I was sort of afraid of him. I suppose that sounds as though I was an awful coward, but it was so. He used to look at me so hard through those dark glasses, and lots of times I have waked up in the night and have found him standing by my bed staring at me.”
“He probably wanted to see how sound a sleeper you were,” said Frank. “Suppose he had croaked you?”
“Frank, dear!” said Mrs. Wolfe in shocked tones. “Where do you pick up such awful slang? You should think of Willie.”
“I know some worse than that,” crowed Bill. “Want to hear it, mom?”
“Certainly not!” said Mrs. Wolfe.
“Well, what are you going to do, Dee?” asked Mr. Wolfe.
“I don’t know, sir,” said Dee. “I have an Aunt down in the Blue Grass but of course I don’t know whether she wants me or not, and I feel sort of queer about going down to see her before she knows about me. It would make her feel as though she had to take me in.”
“I will tell you what to do, if you will let me,” said Mrs. Wolfe. “Come here and stay with Bill through this term of High School. That is my first plan for you. The second is this:
“Next Saturday we will go down to your Aunt’s, you and I, and we will see what she is like, and have a talk with her, and then you can decide what you would like to do.”
“And my plan is this,” said Frank, breaking in. “I will take you down in the flivver, and as Fatty would say, that will save your carfare.”
“Very well, we will let you,” said Mrs. Wolfe, and Frank laughed.
“That’s the way she acts when I spend my good gasoline on her: says 'We will let you.’ Isn’t that enough to make a man drink seventeen chocolate ice-cream sodas in succession? Mom, you are an inweiglin’ wampire!”
“And you are a perfect silly!” smiled his mother. “Now, Dee, what do you think of that for a plan?”
“Just the thing,” said Dee. “But I can’t go on the way I have been going. I am not sure I can go to school any more.”
“Why, why not?” demanded Bill.
“I will have to go to work,” answered Dee stoutly. “I can’t go and live on my Aunt and I can’t come here and not pay board, and I have no money at all.”
“Don’t let that worry you,” said the detective. “Your stepfather had plenty of money. He had accounts in three or four banks here, an account in Rochester, New York, and three more in Chicago. And he owns the house you are living in.”
“That was in the market when De Lorme bought it for twenty-two thousand dollars,” said Mr. Wolfe.
“I can’t take his money,” said Dee. “It is not clean.”
“Now, look here, my boy,” said the practical detective. “Let me tell you where that money came from. It was not wrung from the poor and needy. It came mostly as free offerings at the meetings he used to address, and the fees of the Order. If you are able to take the money from a lot of unbalanced half-cracked lunatics, and educate yourself so that you will be a help instead of a hindrance to this country of ours, you go ahead and do it! The money really belonged to De Lorme, and we found a will to-day giving all that he had to you. I think that will was just another blind. I don’t believe he ever in the world meant to use it, but it was a good way of proving how much he thought of you. Especially if you should disappear some fine day.
“Oh, he was smooth. Think how many years he went scot free. But he never meant to be taken. He had that poison right with him on his watch chain, all the time. You take the money with a clean conscience. If you don’t some anarchist will come prancing along and claim it. We will get that will probated before you can say Jack Robinson. Of course you will take the money.”
“Most certainly he will take it,” said Frank. “He will take it, or—or—I will take it myself.”
“Well, of course if you think it is all right,” said Dee. “I do want to go to school and fit myself for something of the right sort.”
It was settled so, and that very night Dee came to Bill’s to stay.
The club room became a place of beauty and comfort. When the furniture from the De Lorme house was being packed for the auction room downtown, the Wireless Club went through the house from cellar to attic and selected rugs and furniture for the club room.
Dee showed them the laboratory, with all its delicate utensils and tools. And in a drawer they found a number of empty infernal machine cases. Dee gave one to each boy as a keepsake. He did not know what to do with his mother’s little trunk until Mrs. Wolfe suggested taking it down to the country. Dee showed her the letters he had found and she shed tears of sympathy over them.
Old Anna remained in the empty house, refusing to leave until the very day that the furniture was taken out. Then she appeared with a huge suit case, and said briefly, “I go.”
“Go where?” Dee demanded.
“Home,” said Anna. “I have no place here now, and I go. I am like Mr. De Lorme. I too believe in down with everything, but there is no place for that here. Americans, they growl and they sneer, but always they sing, 'My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty,’ and what can you do? They are all satisfied down in their hearts. Only the dwellers in far lands who come here are anarchists. Across the water, when an anarchist shows himself much, off goes his head! He is dead! Over here, they laugh; they say, 'Let him rave, he enjoys it, let him go on.’ It is only when they arrange for a day like the thirteenth like rattlebrains, why then America says, 'Bad child, don’t you do that or else I send you home.’”
“You must have some money anyway,” said Dee.
The old woman shook her head. “Anna has plenty.” She fumbled in her dress and pulled out a sack containing many bills of large denominations.
“There is much money,” said old Anna. “And I will go home and live like a lady. I shall not give it up to someone who has not earned it. Bah! Down with everything if you please, but Anna keeps her money.”
She turned and walked away, then as she left the room, she turned and said: “Most of the money Mr. De Lorme had belonged to your mother. Old Anna knows. Get it quick before the courts get it, and carry it about with you. That’s the only way.”
Without a good-bye, she went through the door and was gone, leaving Dee with a light heart. So the money came from his mother! Of course it was his.
He found the Aunt down in the beautiful Blue Grass country all that a lonely boy would wish. She was altogether lovely, altogether loving and he returned to Louisville for school with the feeling that at last he had people of his own and a home to go to when he was not studying. Letters came from her every week, and he found himself looking forward to Monday as his letter-day.
One day a month or so later, the Wireless Club was holding a meeting to decide whether any new members should be admitted and the club enlarged. As they were in the most heated part of the discussion, Frank and Ernest came in.
“Aha, we are all here,” said Ernest. He looked at Fatty. “Even little sunbeam over there. My word, Henry Bascom, you are certainly growing thin.”
Fatty took on a look of cheer.
“That’s what,” he said. “Glad you noticed it. Everybody does! I lost three ounces last week.”
“Break it gently, gently to me,” said Ernest. “Well, you are going down hill fast, I should say. Do you diet?”
“Yes,” said Fatty. “That’s the way I am doing it. It’s hard, but it works.”
“Let’s hear how you do it,” said Ernest.
“Well,” said Fatty, “I only eat eight pancakes every morning, and one glass of milk, and next week I am going to cut down on cereals. Only take one bowlful, you know. Cream is awfully fattening.”
“You are going to make it, sure as shooting,” said Ernest delightedly. “Gee, I am proud of you! But you want to go slow. Don’t let this diet stuff run away with you. I knew a fellow once—”
“Did he die?” asked Fatty suspiciously.
Ernest looked grieved.
“Die? No!” he said. “It was this way. He was a young chap, and fat. My, he was certainly well padded! Well, he wanted to go in for football, and he was afraid to play the way he was, because once he tried it and someone took him for the pigskin and kicked him clear off the gridiron. So he started in just as you are, cutting out part of his pancakes, then cereals, then bread and butter, and only ate a square inch of meat and so on, the way the books said to do. I forgot to say that he was doing this by the correspondence school method. After awhile he commenced to lose, and he lost and he lost, and he went down from two hundred pounds to one-eighty, and then to one-fifty and next he tipped the beam at one-ten. So it went on. He commenced eating more cakes and things, but he couldn’t stop. Poor chap, I’ll never forget the last time I saw him!” Ernest paused.
“Where was he?” asked Frank, who never failed to come across with the right question.
“Living skeleton in a side show,” groaned Ernest.
“Awful!” said Frank, and the boys roared.
“What do you do with yourself now there are no more dynamiters to lay low?” asked Ernest.
“I wish there were,” said Eddie Rowland. “Those were the good old days! I’d like ’em back. There is one thing certain. The wireless was a wonder and we did some pretty smooth spy work, but the best detective work of all was done high in the air. That’s always an aviator’s luck.”
THE END.