So he began pretending, and acting, very cleverly, the way the doctors and nurses seemed to want him to act, and after a while they gave him his clothes and let him go.
He was becoming cleverer now. He thought, What would Harley tell me to do? And he knew they’d try to follow him because they’d think he might lead them to the plates, which they didn’t know were at the bottom of the bay, and he gave them the slip before he left Albany, and he went first to Boston, and from there by boat to New York, instead of going direct.
He went first to the print shop, and went in the back way after watching the alley for a long time to be sure the place wasn’t guarded. It was a mess; they must have searched it very thoroughly for the plates.
Harley wasn’t there, of course. Justin left and from a phone booth in a drugstore he telephoned their hotel and asked for Harley and was told Harley no longer lived there; and to be clever and not let them guess who he was, he asked for Justin Dean, and they said Justin Dean didn’t live there any more either.
Then he moved to a different drugstore and from there he decided to call up some friends of Harley’s, and he phoned Bull Mallon first and because Bull was a friend, he told him who he was and asked if he knew where Harley was.
Bull Mallon didn’t pay any attention to that; he sounded excited, a little, and he asked, “Did the cops get the plates, Dean?” and Justin said they didn’t, that he wouldn’t tell them, and he asked again about Harley.
Bull asked, “Are you nuts, or kidding?” And Justin just asked him again, and Bull’s voice changed and he said, “Where are you?” and Justin told him. Bull said, “Harley’s here. He’s staying under cover, but it’s all right if you know, Dean. You wait right there at the drugstore, and we’ll come and get you.”
They came and got Justin, Bull Mallon and two other men in a car, and they told him Harley was hiding out way deep in New Jersey and that they were going to drive there now. So he went along and sat in the back seat between two men he didn’t know, while Bull Mallon drove.
It was late afternoon then, when they picked him up, and Bull drove all evening and most of the night and he drove fast, so he must have gone farther than New Jersey, at least into Virginia or maybe farther, into the Carolinas. The sky was getting faintly gray with first dawn when they stopped at a rustic cabin that looked like it had been used as a hunting lodge. It was miles from anywhere, there wasn’t even a road leading to it, just a trail that was level enough for the car to be able to make it.
They took Justin into the cabin and tied him to a chair, and they told him Harley wasn’t there, but Harley had told them that Justin would tell them where the plates were, and he couldn’t leave until he did tell.