“Yeah, I forgot to tell—Barker’s an alias. Devlin’s his right moniker. I found it out when I was here two days.”
“So Frost told him he might burn?” Nickie asked, as if he was turning this odd warning over in his mind. “And that’s what makes you think Barker’s a killer—’cause Frost cracked that?”
“Yeah—sure. What else? Sammy promised he’d try an’ get word back to me somehow so’s to lemme know what job Barker wanted him to do, but he knew an’ I knew it couldn’t be done. Barker’d most likely send him too far away afterward. He went a coupla weeks ago. I been alone since, wonderin’ an’ worryin’ when my turn’d come an’ what it’d be!” Timmy took a deep breath and almost sobbed. “If it’s a killin’ job—I ain’t goin’ through. I ain’t gonna pull no trigger on nobody for Barker or nobody else!”
“Me, neither!” Nickie asserted flatly. “Looks like Barker springs us ’cause it’s easier than springin’ older guys in the big house. Then he gets us for a job an’ if anybody’s grabbed it’ll be us ’cause the law figures us future criminals anyway—see? Ten to one he dopes it we won’t squeal ’cause he’s did us a favor.”
“Just what I think!” Timmy agreed.
Not having the lawless squint upon such matters, Skippy did not know what to think. His active mind was full of plausible answers to the problem, yet somehow he could find no convincing explanation as to Devlin’s real motive. Why did the man, in each case, hire a room and have the boy pose as his son? Why was each boy required to go with him to a physician? There seemed no answer to those questions. Particularly was he puzzled as to why Devlin should accord them all this prisoner-like treatment while they were awaiting release.
He got nowhere along this line. He always ended by asking himself the question: was Devlin as grim of soul as he was of features? Some inner voice was ever prompt in answering this query of his and it was always the same.
Yes!
CHAPTER XI
OVERHEARD
Sleep wouldn’t come to Skippy that night. Hours after Timmy had dejectedly gone to his cot and Nickie had sunk into deep, untroubled slumber beside him, he lay on the hot bed worried and lonely. Aunt Min and Carlton Conne seemed separated from him by a dark and terrible abyss, and he shivered with the fear that he might not get back again to the people and places that typified law, order and safety. Particularly safety.