“Crib? Oh, of course. Sure, Danny. I’ll play crib. I’ll be home right after the up-train pulls out. I’ll be home in good season,” eagerly promised Parsly, suddenly realizing the foreman might get impatient waiting, might take alarm at his boarder failure to reach home, and go in search of him. That would eliminate long, slow hours of torture on the office floor.
“Yes, I’ll be home right after the nine-o’clock goes up,” he said. “I won’t keep you waiting.”
While returning through the woods it suddenly came home to him that he had planned to steal the money. For a moment he felt strongly moved and made a feeble pretense of denying the accusation. Then with a drawn face he muttered:
“⸺ it! Why sidestep? It’s been in my nut for days. I’ll never get another chance like this—so much dough and the yeggs near.”
He sought to distract his mind by bitterly assailing the railroad and express companies and assuring himself the thought would never have occurred to him had he been paid something beyond a starvation wage for a fourteen-hour day. It really wasn’t robbery. Laws were made by men. It was reprisal. When it came to the ethics of it—only Parsly didn’t know what the word meant—he’d earned the money, at least a part of it.
The night connived at his purpose, blowing up cold and desolate and on the verge of a storm. By the time the branch pulled in, the platform was streaming rivulets from the heavy downpour, and the express agent made the office on the run.
“Here’s the stuff!” he yelped, tossing a package on the table. “Nothing to hold us and we’re going right back. So long.” Parsly breathed more freely. Sometimes a mixup over freight, or a hot-box, kept the train, with the men careless of the passing minutes, as they had no schedule to make on the return run to Waverly, the first station, where they would hold the siding for the night.
Outside, the rain was falling with a thunderous clamor, smearing the window panes till it was impossible to make out the switch-lights directly in front of the station. Parsly rose, his eyes glittering. The money must be concealed safely till the morrow.
He had never read Poe’s story of the purloined letter, yet instinct urged a simple hiding-place. He decided on the greasy canvas coat, hung back of the door. He wore it only when cleaning the switch-lamps. The package fitted nicely into one capacious pocket. No one would ever find it there. Now to arrange the stage settings, the overturned furniture, the open door—
The door opened. Four men were crowding in through the miniature waterfall released from the loaded eaves. Parsly eyed them as one entranced, his gaze frozen with horror. It was no physical fear he dreaded, but for the moment it seemed as if his evil purpose had escaped him and now stood crystallized into tangible shapes, each a unit of wickedness.