“He’s a born fool,” growled the fat man, mopping his bald brow and glaring at the cringing Joe.
The other fellow was quietly slipping around the corner of the railroad station. He was not going to be present during this altercation.
“He’s something besides a fool,” said Mr. Collinger sternly. “It’s you, Brady, who have shown a lack of wit. I know very well you put this fellow up to taking my car because you thought I was carrying those road maps around in it.”
“You think a whole lot, Collinger,” snarled the big man. “But you can’t prove a thing.”
“No. Not unless Joe, here, turns state’s evidence, and he wouldn’t dare do that. I know the sort of hold you have on such fellows, Brady. But, nevertheless, you are the goat in this matter.”
“Huh?” queried the politician.
Mr. Collinger went to his car, drawing a bunch of keys from his pocket as he did so. He selected a flat key and quickly inserted it in a tiny aperture in the face-panel of the seat—an aperture that the uninitiated would never dream was a keyhole.
To the amazement of all, the county surveyor slipped aside the panel and displayed a shallow closet filled with rolls of parchment.
“Just what I thought, Brady,” he said, with scorn. “You had ’em in the stolen auto all the time. Now the time has come to deliver them to the commission and I sha’n’t carry them any more. Now, who was the fool, Brady?”
But the big man was stamping away to the platform. Saleratus Joe slunk after him like a whipped cur.