CHAPTER XX
THE VOICE
The camp-fire had died, the last embers had been trodden out, the scouts had turned in for the night. A half dozen or so fresh air enthusiasts lay upon their couches of balsam under a big elm, through the high branches of which the stars looked down upon the weary toilers, dead to the world. For a precious interval at least they would feel no disappointment. It was well that they were tired that night.
They had not decided what they should do, but they knew they could not conceal a criminal and take money from him and count him their companion. They must do a detestable thing; they must go home and tell. They did not relish doing this, they could not relish it. They were not of the class of detectives. They were capable of feeling contemptible....
There, close to where they slept, were the results of their faithful labor. And there, too, were the dead embers of their cheerful fire around which they and their strange, likable companion, had gathered night after night. One shack had completely disappeared, another stood there in the darkness like a skeleton to mock them, the third was to have been tackled in dead earnest in the morning. Then would come the dividing of the money–oh, the whole thing would seem like a dream when they awakened.
Only Warde and Roy were abroad on that still night. They sat upon the sill of a shack rather more pretentious than the barnlike buildings all about, for it had been officers’ quarters. There were even the rotten remnants of curtains in the windows, necessary no doubt to help defeat the Germans. The neighborhood was very quiet and very dark, save for the sounds caused by the breeze in those old wrecks of buildings. Every rusty hinge and loose board and creaky joint seemed to contribute to this dismal music. One might easily have imagined those dark, spectral structures to be tenanted by the ghosts of dead soldiers.
“Why didn’t you mention Quebec?” Roy asked. “Why didn’t you ask him if he had been there? That was the place named in the notice.”
“That isn’t what I was thinking about,” Warde said. “I was reading in the old scout handbook[[2]] how you can tell where people come from by their talk. If a person belongs in Canada he’ll say Monreal instead of Montreal. He’ll say Tranto instead of Toronto.”
“Yes?” urged Roy, hopefully.
“That’s all,” Warde said. “He doesn’t talk as if he came from up that way. But the notice didn’t say he belonged there, it only said he was wanted there. The way he spoke about the robin was what got me. I can’t make him out at all.”