“All right, sir; you come along with me,” said the superintendent briskly.
CHAPTER XVIII
GUILTY
“Can’t you take me to the man that owns this place?” poor Hervey asked, as his captor strode along, holding him by the sleeve.
“I’d have to take you all the way to Europe to do that,” the man answered with a kind of brisk pleasantry. “Switzerland and gosh knows where all. And all I got is two men on the grounds.”
The unfortunate captive ventured to take advantage of this faint sign of relenting. “If I promise never to⸺”
“You promise that to the man I’m going to take you to,” the superintendent interrupted. “I’ve got nothing to do with it.” He seemed not a bad sort, but rather a man keyed up to perform a plain duty. “I was on the grill, now it’s your turn,” he said. “I’ve got the harvests to get ready for and grading down the terraces and it seems I’ve got to look out for every grape-stealing fence climber in the state.”
Hervey tried another tack with this much-harassed man who talked shop so freely with him. “Bimbo, I feel sorry for you,” he said.
The man glanced sideways at him. “Well, I reckon nobody’s going to kill you,” he said.
He hurried along winding gravel walks, Hervey running to keep up with him. Soon they passed along the side of a great brick mansion covered with ivy. The windows on the ground floor were boarded up. The lawn which they crossed was shaded by mammoth elms and at a pretty granite bird bath, a robin was leisurely taking a drink, pausing like an epicure after each draught. Hervey wished that he was to be taken before the owner of this princely estate; somehow he felt that he would stand a chance with a gentleman of such wealth. He knew that wealthy gentlemen helped the Boy Scouts. But then he was no longer a scout....
With brisk concentration on a palpably unpleasant task the responsible custodian of the place passed out into the road and along it for perhaps a hundred yards where there were several houses, a couple of stores and a square white church. This was all there was of Farrelton Junction. Down in the woods was a tiny railroad station. The superintendent conducted Hervey to a white peak-roofed house almost exactly like the one he lived in. Like most New England houses it was porchless and severe. But it looked as if it had been painted only that very day. On the front door a modest sign proclaimed it to be the home of Alden Snibbel, Justice of the Peace. Hervey was relieved that this time it was not a police station he was to enter.