“That’s the truth, Steve.”
THE two men left the room. Harper came in as they entered, and removed the bottles. Then he turned out the lights.
Scarcely had the room became dark before the iron shutters opened as noiselessly as they had in the afternoon. An invisible hand came over the window sill, and removed the small instrument from behind the radiator.
Outside the road house, a still, shadowy form moved back across the lawn to a clump of bushes. That spot had been the receiving end of the dictograph connection, where the invisible listener had overheard the entire conversation that had passed between Joe le Blanc and Steve Cronin.
No one saw the black shape enter the bushes. It remained there. When Joe le Blanc drove his car from the garage, the headlights shone directly upon the shrubbery, but they revealed nothing. The coupe moved slowly, and as it passed beside the bushes, Joe le Blanc spoke.
“I told Monk Thurman to come out here,” he said, “and I kind of expected him tonight. But now I’m glad he didn’t show up — “
Steve Cronin grunted a reply of approval as the car swung away from the shrubbery beside the drive.
As the red light on the rear of the automobile moved toward the highway, there was a sound that emerged from the silence of the bushes.
It was a sound that did not reach the ears of Le Blanc or Cronin, for they were then too far away, and the noise of the motor was throbbing in their ears.
Had they heard the sound, they would have been amazed — Joe le Blanc because of the strangeness of the sound; Steve Cronin, because he had heard that sound in the past.