“If all you say is true—and of course it is—” the Colonel said slowly, “something should be done about it.”
He went into a brown study. He drummed the desk with his pencil.
“Tell you what,” he said at last, “Rome was not built in a day. Let’s not be in a hurry. The evidence you already possess convinces you and me. But would it convince everyone? We’ll just wait a bit and see if we cannot gather more. If those two men return they will do something else. We’ll be prepared to trap them. Let’s see if we can’t worry along until two weeks from—let’s see—” he consulted his calendar. “Yes sir! That’s the very day!”
Johnny knew he was speaking now of something strange and quite unknown to him.
“Yes sir!” the Colonel repeated, “You see if we can’t wait to spring this thing two weeks from next Saturday, after the game, the last of the season. And Johnny—” he leaned forward to whisper in the boy’s ear. “I think at that time I can tell you J.’s secret. Or—wait! Better still—I’ll have him tell it.”
“That,” said Johnny in a tone that carried conviction, “will be swell!”
A moment later he found himself once more in the street. His precious paper bag of “evidence” was securely tucked under his arm.
After taking a dozen steps he paused to look back. Strangely enough, in his mind’s eye he saw at that moment not a brick building, but an airplane landing. From the airplane two persons stepped. One slim and dark with a dyed face, and the other was Colonel Chamberlain. Then his own words to the aviator on that night several days ago, came back to him: “Looks like a jail delivery.”
“But it couldn’t have been Colonel Chamberlain!” he told himself stoutly now. “Or, if it was, it surely was all right.” He was determined not to lose faith in a friend. “‘Thine own friend and thy father’s friend forsake not,’” he whispered.
Saturday afternoon came. The day was bright and clear. A brisk breeze from the west was blowing loose papers across the diamond. “Good!” Johnny exulted to himself. “There’ll be no soaring airplane today. But that ugly pair will be up to something!” His brow wrinkled. Once again he murmured, “I wonder why.”