Jo dropped flat on his stomach and pulled Helen down beside him and the others followed his example. Slowly they crept forward and came to the edge of the little clearing on the edge of the pond.
Two men were seated before the crackling sticks of a small fire. Ann had never seen either of them before. They were dressed in dark blue wool and she felt sure that the cloth was like the torn piece that Jo carried constantly in his pocket. Were they sailors from the wreck? And where had they been all the time since the boat came ashore last winter?
The nearer man was big. His shaggy hair was tumbled and long on his bare head and a heavy beard covered the lower part of his face. Ann knew that he would be an ugly customer, and quieter than ever she lay motionless under the bushes. The other man was small and lithely thin like a weasel. He had a weasel’s tiny pale eyes that darted nervously everywhere while he talked. He was very white with an unnatural pallor and as the glow of the fire leaped up in his face Ann could see a long newly healed scar that ran from one eye down across his cheek to his small receding chin.
The men were talking in low tones, the big man gruff and hoarse, the smaller one in a screechy weak whine. At times their voices rose louder as their argument became intense, and then dropped back into a low rumble. Finally the small man looked up at the sky.
“It’s going to be a terrible blow,” he said bitterly.
“What of it?” demanded the big one. “The darker the night the easier it will be to take care of that butting-in detective, and no one will be the wiser. What’s the matter with you, Charlie? Your yeller streak is comin’ forninst, now that the real job is ahead of us.”
Charlie’s weasel eyes jumped furtively as he looked into the big man’s face. “I ain’t no squealer,” he snapped. “You know that. I ain’t the one to shy off when I can see my way clear. You found me ready enough with my bit against the captain and the mate. But this guy you’re planning for now is something different. You can’t knock off men like him; it doesn’t do any good. Some one else steps into his place and then they hunt you until they get you.”
“I ain’t arguing that,” Tom answered soberly. “But who is going to know what happens to one lone man? If he falls off the deck of that wrecked schooner and hits his head against a rock as the sea washes him about, who is going to connect us with the accident? That farmer will bury him alongside the captain and the mate and blame nobody but the boat itself, blame that figurehead, probably. And you and me will be living like kings down in Boston.”
“That sounds first-class,” the other sneered scornfully. “But I been noticing that things aren’t going quite so much your way as you expected they would.”
“What do you mean?” growled Tom.