“Why, it’s the thing I’ve been waiting for,” he stated, something close akin to wonder in his voice. “It’s just a man’s size chance. I’d have to take it––I’d have to do that, even if I didn’t want to––for myself.”
And later, while he was kindling a fire in the stove and methodically preparing his own breakfast, he paused to add with what seemed to be absolute irrelevance:
“Silk––silk, next to her skin!”
There were only two trains a day over the single-track spur road that connected Boltonwood with the outer world beyond the hills; one which left at a most unreasonably inconvenient hour in the early morning and one which left just as inconveniently late 95 at night. Denny Bolton, who had viewed from a distinctly unfavorable angle any possible enchantment which the town might chance to offer, settled upon the first as the entirely probable choice of the short, fat, brown-clad newspaper man, even without a moment’s hesitation to weigh the merits of either. And the sight of the round bulk of the latter, huddled alone upon a baggage truck before the deserted Boltonwood station-shed, fully vindicated his judgment.
It was still only a scant hour since daybreak. Heavy, low-hanging clouds in the east, gray with threatening rain, cut off any warmth there might have been in the rising sun and sharpened the raw wind to a knifelike edge. The man on the truck was too engrossed with the thoughts that shook his plump shoulders in regularly recurring, silent chuckles, and a ludicrously doleful effort to shut off with upturned collar the draft from the back of his neck, to hear the boy’s approaching footsteps. He started guiltily to his feet in the very middle of a spasmodic upheaval, to stand and stare questioningly at the big figure whose fingers had plucked tentatively at his elbow, until a sudden, delighted recognition flooded his face. Then he reached out one pudgy hand with eager cordiality.
“Why, greetings––greetings!” he exclaimed. “Didn’t quite recognize you with your––er––decoration.” His eyes dwelt in frank inquisitiveness upon the ragged red bruise across Young Denny’s chin. 96 “You’re the member who stood near the door last night, aren’t you––the one who didn’t join to any marked degree in the general jubilee?”
Young Denny’s big, hard hand closed over the outstretched pudgy white one. He grinned a little and slowly nodded his head.
“Thought so,” the man in brown rambled blithely on, “and glad to see you again. Glad of a chance to speak to you! I wanted most mightily to ask you a few pertinent questions last night, but it hardly seemed a fitting occasion.”
He tapped Young Denny’s arm with a stubby forefinger, one eyelid drooping quizzically.
“Entre nous––just ’twixt thee and me,” he went on, “and not for publication, was this Jeddy Conway, as you knew him, all that your eminent citizenry would lead a poor gullible stranger to believe, or was he just a small-sized edition of the full-blown crook he happens to be at the present stage of developments? Not that it makes any difference here,” he tapped the big notebook under his arm, “but I’m just curious, a little, because the Jed The Red whom I happen to know is so crooked nowadays that his own manager is afraid to place a bet on him half the time. See?”