“Maybe,” Skippy said in a small voice.
“You never can tell,” Nickie said, his eyes staring into space.
They ate in silence, a strange oppressive silence, and Skippy felt almost glad when Frost’s hurried steps sounded on the stairs. If it had to be, it was better to have it over now than to endure the tension of waiting and living in dread.
A smile and a handclasp and they were gone. Nickie and Skippy stood listening as Frost locked the woodshed door from the outside. When the car chugged softly outside they made no attempt to go to the windows and look. Neither one moved an inch until the sound of the motor had ceased to echo in the clearing.
“If I thought Frost didn’t have no gun, I’d jumped him,” said Nickie at last. “But catch him and Devlin in a racket like this without carryin’ rods, hah?”
Skippy was again reminded of Carlton Conne’s assurance that Dean Devlin was not the gun-toting kind of criminal. The boy had no doubt but that that had been true of Devlin once, but not now. Too, the detective had said that Devlin was after people’s money—not people. In the light of what Skippy now knew, that also was no longer true. Devlin had evidently made rapid strides in criminality. He had taken on a partner and whatever his mystery racket was, the fact that he trafficked in these convicted boys, evidently for gain, robbed him completely of the superficial glamour his adventurous life might have previously given him.
“Say, Nickie,” Skippy said at length, “we got five days here alone an’ if we can’t do a Houdini in that time we’re a coupla bums.”
Nickie’s face became radiant. “Gotta plan, kid?”
“I gotta hunch maybe we can work loose a coupla bars in some window! If we can’t find a crowbar, maybe we’ll find sump’n else, huh? We’ll start down cellar right away.”
“You said it, kid!” Nickie was enthusiastic. “And when we scram outa this drum, I’ll say like Biff and Shorty, we’ll go home’n’ say hello an’ then tell the dicks we’re reportin’ for Delafield.”