“I—I oughtn’t to!” Horton hesitated, and Storm seized upon his opportunity.
“You’re safer here with that bag than you would be traveling at night. You can get a train at almost any hour in the morning, and you said they didn’t check up on your time.” He paused, and as the other still visibly wavered he added persuasively: “Tell you what I’ll do, Jack. I’ve got some business to attend to in Philadelphia that would require my presence there in a day or two, anyway; if you’ll wait over I’ll go part of the way with you to-morrow. It isn’t often that two chaps who were such good pals at college meet after so many years, and we have a lot to talk over yet.”
“That’s so,” Horton agreed. “A few hours more or less won’t make any difference, I guess, and I’ll be mighty glad to have your company part of the way in the morning. I’m not due back until late in the afternoon; got through my business to-day ahead of time. That’s how I came to think of stopping off for a look at the old town.”
“It would make trouble if you weren’t there to-morrow, though?” Storm asked slowly. “I mean, if you should stay over with me——?”
“Trouble? Say!” Horton leaned forward impressively. “If I weren’t there by six o’clock to-morrow night every wire in the east would be hot from efforts to locate me. I’m not so precious to them, but their little old hundred thousand odd—wow!”
He flickered the ashes from his cigar, and a few flakes missed the tray and fell on the shining surface of the table top. Storm watched them settle, just as those other ashes must have settled among the flowers . . . God, why did he have to think of that now? ‘In a thicket with his head bashed in’! There was a spot up the Drive past the viaduct where the path turned sharply, and on the other side of the low wall was a sheer drop of fifty feet or more with stout bushes clinging to it all the way down. A living man could grab them and save himself, perhaps, but a dead body, hurtled over the wall——
“You’ll get there, all right.” Storm forced himself to speak casually. “You’re traveling light, but I can make you comfortable for the night——”
“Comfortable?” Horton spread his legs out luxuriously. “I’m so darned comfortable right now that I wouldn’t change places with a king! Lord, but it’s like old times to see you again, Norman! Twenty years is a long stretch, but it seems only yesterday that we sat smoking together in your old rooms, and usually planning some devilment, too! Remember the love letters on pink paper that we sent to the old chemistry prof.—what was his name? Oh, yes, Peebles. Gad, we kept them up for weeks until he was afraid to look even the president’s old maid sister in the face!”
He chuckled reminiscently, and Storm’s lips twisted in a smile. ‘Head bashed in!’ How could he do it? What sort of weapon——? From where he sat he could look over his guest’s shoulder into the hall, and the umbrella stand was in a direct line of vision. Potter had been rather a connoisseur of canes, and among those he had left behind him in his hurried departure was a curious one with a loaded head. A tap with it would crack a skull like an egg-shell! But not if that skull were covered by a thick, soft felt hat, such as Horton wore when they met. If he could contrive to make him put on an old golf cap, on some pretext; could get him up the Drive to that lonely spot where the wall sheered down, he would have but to strike once and the bag and its precious contents would be his! He listened. Had the rain stopped? It was no longer beating against the window. He must make an excuse to look out and see.
“We certainly pulled off a few stunts in the old days!” he observed. “Don’t you think it’s a bit stuffy in here? Let’s get some of the smoke out.”