“He was pretty sure, for instance, that I had overheard something that endangered his plans that night. Yet he was afraid, when I bluffed him, to tie me up. Svenson wanted to drop me overboard, I think, and fix me so that I wouldn’t come up again very easily, but Barrows wouldn’t stand for it. He just made excuses to keep me on board, and he was mighty anxious to avoid anything that would even look like a fight. I think he’s a coward. He’s a dangerous man, and he’s certainly a clever one, but he hasn’t got the animal courage of Harding. Another thing I’ve noticed about these gamblers, since they’ve been bothering us, is that they are very anxious, especially when they get outside of the big city, to keep on the safe side of the law. Harding was really terrified in New London when he thought that Brady and I were going to have him sent to jail for assault. I rather believe that it injures their prestige among their companions to be sent to prison.”
“I think that’s just it,” said Dick Merriwell. “It isn’t that they mind the disgrace, but it makes them look as if they couldn’t take care of themselves. None of these fellows work alone. They have to have a lot of lesser criminals that will do what they tell them, and those fellows depend upon their employer to keep them out of trouble. It’s like that poor little rat of a burglar that Harding sent here to rob Jim’s rooms. He seemed to be perfectly willing to tell all he knew until Harding showed his power with the politicians by getting himself released at once. Then he lost his nerve at once, and the police down there couldn’t get a thing out of him that would incriminate Harding.”
“Still,” said Brady, “there’s no telling what he would do under the present conditions. I guess he’s pretty nearly broke—and that must be almost as humiliating for those fellows as going to jail.”
Jim Phillips chuckled suddenly.
“Of course,” he said, “I don’t want to see the bank robbed, but I was just thinking of what our friend, Detective Jones, of the New Haven Police Department, would do if he had a bank robbery to handle. He’s always complaining of the absence of a chance to distinguish himself here in New Haven, because they don’t have any sensational and important crimes. I think he’d be tickled to death at the chance to show his real powers. He’s firmly convinced that he could give the United States Secret Service and the New York Detective Bureau all sorts of hints on the proper way to solve any sort of a mystery, from an Italian kidnaping to a big smuggling case.”
“He’s a well-meaning little chap,” said Dick Merriwell, “and not at all a bad detective, really. I think he’d do pretty well with a little more experience.”
Dick got up then, after looking at his watch.
“Nearly three o’clock,” he said. “I’ve got to go over to that bank and deposit some money. I intended to go up to Maine, but this game with Boston has made that impossible. So I’m going to deposit this five thousand dollars I’ve got with me, and get a bank draft to send up there. It’s a safer way to send money, anyhow.”
He counted out the money, in shining, new hundred-dollar bills, glistening with their yellow backs, and Harry Maxwell sighed enviously.
“Gee!” he said, “I’d have knocked you on the head myself, I think, if I’d known that you had that much with you.”