“And you can’t force him to do it?”
“We shall force him, easily enough,” returned Mercer, “but we don’t trust him. We want his private code book to be sure he is playing fair. In fact, we have to have it, because nothing gets any attention that isn’t, so to speak, properly introduced.”
“And he will not give it to you?”
“Says he has lost it.”
“Perhaps he has,” mused the soldier. “But now, all this is not my concern, except that I have no right, as a soldier, even passively to aid in breaking the laws. It is my duty to rescue and free Mr. Keatcham.”
But before he could speak further Mercer lifted a hand in apologetic interruption. Would Colonel Winter excuse him, but he must ask Mr. Tracy to go back to the patio and have an eye on the detective. Endicott only exchanged a single glance before he obeyed. Mercer’s eyes followed him. “It was not to be helped,” he said, half to himself, “but I have been sorry more than once that I had to take him into this.”
Winter looked at him, more puzzled than he wanted to admit to himself; indeed, he was rather glad to have the next word come from Mercer.
“I have a few things I want to say to you; they go easier when we are alone—but won’t you sit down?” When the colonel had seated himself he went on: “I’d like to explain things a bit.”
“I’d like to have you,” answered the soldier. “I think you have the clue to Archie’s whereabouts and don’t recognize it yourself; so put me wise, as the slang goes.”
Then, without preface, in brief, nervous sentences, spoken hardly with a quiver of a muscle or a wavering cadence of the voice, yet nevertheless instinct with a deadly earnestness, Mercer began to talk. He told of his struggling youth on the drained plantation, mortgaged so that after the interest was paid there was barely enough to get the meagerest living for his mother and sister and little brother; of his accidental discovery of iron ore on the place; of his working as a common laborer in the steel mills; of his being “rooster,” “strand-boy,” “rougher,” “heater,” “roller,” during three years while he was waiting for his chance; of his heart-draining toil; of his solitary studies.