“It all goes to prove how fearfully lax we had become here,” he observed after Ralph had told all he knew. “It also shows what a crying necessity for a radical cleaning-up movement there must have been when such criminal elements, working to undermine the characters of our young men and boys, as these, could effect a lodgment in our town. It was high time we woke up and took our coats off for business. Ralph, I want to thank you in the name of every respectable woman and mother in Oakvale for what you have discovered this day. ‘Forewarned is forearmed,’ they say, and before we are through with Gaffney, Slimmons and Company, they will realize that they have been up against a threshing machine.”
Hugh liked to hear the old minister talk like that, for he understood that Mr. Dobbs was really a Civil War veteran, and in the old days had once been known as the “Fighting Parson.” If those unruly men fancied that because he was a shepherd of a flock he would not fight to save his pet lambs from the devouring wolves they made the greatest mistake of their whole lives.
So Mr. Dobbs quickly got the mayor on the wire and asked him to come over to the parsonage without a moment’s delay; also to fetch Doctor Kane along with him if he could possibly do so.
“I’ve got something to communicate that will give you an electric shock, if that hint will cause you to speed your car any the faster, Mr. Mayor,” the boys heard the minister say in conclusion.
It was not a great while before they arrived, for apparently the mayor had either met Doctor Kane on the street or managed to find him at his house. Then once more Ralph was influenced to tell his startling story. He had deeply interested listeners. Hugh could see the mayor gritting his teeth as he had a way of doing when thoroughly aroused.
“These two wide-awake scouts have suggested,” said Mr. Dobbs, after everything had been told, “that we keep very quiet about this discovery, and lay a trap so that when the robbery is actually attempted we may arrest those who are implicated. If they are caught in the act, before they can have any opportunity to place the blame on any one else, we will have no trouble of ridding our town of unworthy citizens. Mr. Mayor, it rests with you to decide.”
“Nothing would please me better!” exclaimed the mayor, strenuously. “Before we go into details with regard to any plan I want to thank these brave boys from the bottom of my heart on account of what the scouts have done and are doing to purge Oakvale of every element that stands, as a blot on a town’s fair name.”
CHAPTER IX.
THE GOAL IN SIGHT.
It was fine of the mayor to say that. Had the women who had labored so long and so arduously in order to accomplish this end overheard what he remarked, they might have whispered among themselves that it was a great pity Mr. Strunk could not have reached the desired resolution many months previously.
But then “better late than never,” and if his eyes were now opened to the enormity of the offenses that had previously been winked at as unavoidable in a bustling community of Oakvale’s size and rapid growth, there was good hope of the future.