“Loose boards all over the room,” Harley Kent explained. “I never bothered to have them nailed down. With the safe in this room I looked upon them as a burglar alarm. And yet, in the uproar of last night’s storm, a cannon ball might have been rolled across the floor and nobody upstairs would have heard it.” His hands made a resigned gesture of defeat. “No matter how sound you think your plans are, you can never be sure.”
“No,” Dr. Stone said slowly, “there’s always a slip.”
The telephone truck was gone, and now another car came up the driveway and stopped with a squeal of brakes.
“Captain Tucker has evidently finished his breakfast at last,” Harley Kent said with bitter sarcasm. “He’ll want to question Donovan. If you don’t mind, Doctor——”
“Of course.” The doctor took an uncertain step and paused. “I seem to have lost my bearings, Kent. Would you give me your arm to the door?”
Joe followed blankly. It was the first time he had ever known his uncle to lose a sense of direction once established. Behind those blind eyes the room, in all its essentials, had been mapped. And even if its outlines had not been printed on a clear mind, the man had only to say, “Lady, out!” and the dog would have taken him to the door. Why take Harley Kent’s arm?
Captain Tucker, on the porch, spoke a greeting and passed inside. The door closed. Down at the end of the gravel where the driveway met the road, Joe instinctively turned toward home. But Dr. Stone said, “Lady, right!” and was off toward the village at that amazingly rapid pace.
“I’m after pipe tobacco, Joe.”
The boy’s shorter legs beat a rapid tattoo on the dirt road. “I bought you some yesterday, Uncle David.”
“An extra tin won’t go to waste,” the man said casually.