“You are right—but tell me about this book. Is there a second-hand book-shop in Timbertown? I didn’t put it on the list, either—but it is a good story. Where’d you get it?—this old copy of ‘Forest Lovers’?”
“That book? Doc Smith send him for you an’ Cathie.”
“What does he know about Cathie and me? Have you been talking all over Timbertown about me?”
“Nope. Nobody there know you fly into the woods—but Doc Smith, he know you fine—so I tell him.”
“He knows me! And you told him where I am hiding! Have you gone mad, Mick? What’s your game?”
“Doc Smith one darn good feller. You trust him like yer own trigger-finger, you bet. Good friend to me, Doc Smith—an’ good friend to you, too. He know you at the war, doctor you one time, some place don’t know his name, when you have one busted rib.”
“Smith? Not the M. O. with the red head; a jolly chap who sang ‘The Fiddler’s Wedding’, who hung out just east of Mont St. Eloi in the spring of ’Seventeen?”
“Sure. He say St. Eloi. He read all about you, but nobody ’round Timbertown hear ’bout how you hide in these woods. He read how that feller you hit go live on farm when all the soldier write to the paper how he ain’t no good an’ you one a’mighty fine fighter; an’ Gover’ment take your money outer bank an’ say how you still owe him seven thousand dollar for flyin’ machine.”
“Is that so,” remarked Tom, reflectively. “Seven thousand—and took my money?”
He lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, in a silence so vibrant with deep and keen thought that Mick Otter respected it.