That new Swede chambermaid walks right in an' ketches me at my delicate tasks.

"Always retainin' my calm presence of mind and coolness in emergencies, quick to think an' as ready to act, with an undaunted bravery I sprang at the girl's throat and hissed, 'How much will it take to silence your accursed tongue?' She draws her slight girlish figure up to its full height--'Ten thousand dollars!' she hissed back at me. 'Ten thousand devils!' I cried, hoa.r.s.e with rage--"

Too palpably our hero had been overwhelmed by his pa.s.sion for fict.i.tious prose narrative.

"Hold on, Billy!--back up," broke in Solon. "This is business, you know--this isn't an Old Cap' Collyer tale."

"Well, anyway," resumed Billy, a little abashed, "I silenced the girl. I threatened to have her transported for life if she breathed a word.

Mebbe she didn't suspect anything after all. Tilly ain't so very bright.

So at length I continues my researches into every nook and cranny of the den, and jest as I was about to abandon the trail, baffled and beaten at every turn, what should I git but an idee to look at some papers lyin'

in plain sight on the table at the head of the bed."

"Well, out with it!" I thought Solon was growing a little impatient. But Billy controlled the situation with a firm hand.

"It's an old trick," he continued, "one that's fooled many a better man than Billy Durgin--leavin' the dockaments carelessly exposed like they didn't amount to anything; but havin' the well-known tenacity of a bloodhound, I was not to be thwarted. Well--to make a long story short--"

Solon brightened wonderfully.

"I have to admit that my first suspicion was incorrect. He ain't the one that done that Lima, Ohio, job and carried off them eight hundred dollars' worth of stamps--"

"But what _did_ he do?"

"Well, I got a clew to another past of his--"

"What is it? Let's have it!"

Billy was still not to be driven faster than a detective story should move.

We heard, and dimly saw, him engaged with a metallic object which he drew from under his coat. We were silent. Then we heard him say:--

"My lamp's went out--_darn_ these matches!"

At last he seemed to light something. He unfolded a bit of paper before us and triumphantly across its surface he directed the rays of a bull's-eye lantern. This was his climax. We studied the paper.

"Billy," said Solon, after a pause, "this looks like a good night's work. True, it may come to naught. We may still be baffled, foiled, thwarted at every turn--and yet something tells me that the man is in our power--that by this precious paper we may yet bring the scoundrel to his knees in prayers for our mercy, craven with fear at our knowledge."

"Say," said Billy, stung to admiration by this flow of the right sort of talk, "Mr. Denney, did you ever read 'Little Rosebud, or is Beauty a Curse to a Poor Girl?' That sounded just like the detective in that--you remember--where he's talkin' to Clarence Armytage just after he's overheard the old lawyer tell Mark Vinton, the villain, 'If this child lives, you are a beggar!' Remember that?"

"Why, no, Billy. I must get that, first thing in the morning. My tribute to your professional skill was wholly spontaneous, though perhaps a shade influenced by having listened to your own graphic style. But come, men! Let us separate and be off, ere we are discovered. And mind, not a word of this. One false step might ruin all! So have a care."

It must have been one of the few perfect moments in the life of Billy.

"You may rely upon William Durgin to the bitter end," said he, with a quiet dignity. "But there is work yet ahead for me to-night.

"I got to regain my hotel un.o.bserved. My life is not safe a moment with my every step dogged by the hired a.s.sa.s.sins of that infamous scoundrel."

"If death or disaster come to you, Billy, you shall not be unavenged. We swear it here on this spot. _Swear_, Cal!"

"Say," Billy called back to us, after adjusting his beard, "if anything comes of this,--rewards or anything,--first thing I'm goin' a' do--git me a good forty-four Colts. You can't stop a man with this here little twenty-two, an' it's only a one-shot at that. I'd be in a _nice_ hole sometime, wouldn't I, with my back up against a wall an' six or seven of 'em comin' for me an' nothin' but _this_ in my jeans?"

"Point that the other way, Billy--we'll see about a bigger one later. We can't do anything to-night. And sell your life as dearly as possible if you have to sell it."

I fell asleep that night on a conviction that our taste for barren reality is our chief error. If we could only believe forever, what a good world it could be--"a world of fine fabling," indeed! Also I wondered what J. Rodney Potts might have to apprehend from the leaven of fact in the fabling of Billy Durgin.

CHAPTER IX

HOW THE BOSS SAVED HIMSELF

He whom they had, with facetious intent, called "the Boss of Little Arcady" now began to wear a mien of defiance. From being confessedly distraught, he displayed, as the days went by, a spiritual uplift that fell but little short of arrogance. He did not permit any reason to be revealed for this marked change of demeanor. He was confident but secretive, serene but furtive, as one who has endured gibes for the sake of one brilliant _coup_.

This apparently causeless change permeated even to the columns of the _Argus_. It had been observed by more than one of us that these had of late suffered from the depression of their editor. Their general tone had been negative. Now they spoke in a lightsome tone of self-sufficiency. They were gay, even jaunty. It was in this very epoch that the verse was born which for many years sang blithely from the top of the first column--sang of Denney's public-spirited optimism as to Sloc.u.m County and the Little Country.

Keep your eye on Sloc.u.m, She's all right!

Her skies are clear and full of cheer, And all her prospects bright.

As pointing more specifically to the incubus of Potts, there was this:--

"Lots of people are saying that we have met our Waterloo. They forget that Waterloo was a _victory_ as well as a defeat. Two men met it, and the name of one was Wellington. Look it up in your encyclopaedia."

But the faction of Potts, it should be noted, saw no reason to be impressed by a vaunting so vague. It had not tempered its hopefulness.

Its idol was jubilant, careless as a schoolboy, babbling but sober. The _Banner_ still challenged the world with its page-wide line: "Potts Forever! Potts the Coming Man!"

Certain hopeful souls among the opposition had taken counsel how they might cause Potts to fall by means of strong drink. They had observed that the mill-race was still significantly uncovered. But to all invitations, all cunning incitements to indulgence, Potts was urbanely resistant. Conscious that a river of strong waters rippled at his feet, freely to be partaken of did he choose, it is true that his face showed lines of restraint, a serene restraint, like unto that which the great old painters limned so beautifully upon the face of the martyr. But the martyrs of old in their ecstasy were not more resolute than Potts. It is probable that he looked forward to a period of post-election refreshment; but pending the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, his determination was such that it stamped his face with something akin to dignity. Said Westley Keyts, "If it was raining whiskey, Potts wouldn't drink as much as he could ketch on a fork!" and to this the town agreed. For once Potts was firm.

His alpaca suit had visibly deteriorated during the campaign, and his tall hat again cried for the glossing ministry of a heated iron, but his virtue burgeoned under stress and flowered to beauty in the sight of men. It was understood at last that the mill-race might as well be covered for any advent.i.tious relation it could sustain to Potts drunk.

Westley Keyts's suggestion that Potts be weighted with pig-iron and dumped into the healing waters, drunk or sober, was the mere playfulness of an excellent butcher unpractised in sarcasm. His offer to supply, free of cost, a quant.i.ty of pig-iron ample for the purpose left this hypothesis unavoidable, for Westley winked flagrantly and leered when he voiced it.

But a retribution subtler than mere drowning awaited the superfluous Potts; a retribution so simple of mechanism, so swift, so potent, and wrought with a talent so masterly, that the right of its instigator to the t.i.tle of Boss of Little Arcady seemed to be una.s.sailable for all future time.

At the very zenith of his heavenward flight Potts was brought low. At the very nethermost point of his downward swoop Solon Denney was raised to a height so dizzy that even the erstwhile sceptic spirit of Westley Keyts abased itself before him, frankly conceding that diplomacy's innocent and mush-like surface might conceal springs of a terrible potency.

Though Solon's public mien for a week or more had been hint enough of his secret to those who knew him well, I was, possibly, the first to whom he confided it in words.

He sent for me one crisp October morning, and I rushed over to the _Argus_ office, knowing that he must have matters of importance to communicate.

I found him pacing the little sanctum, scanning a still damp sheet of proof. His brow was furrowed, but the lines were those of conscious power. In the broken chair by the littered desk sat Billy Durgin, his eyes ablaze with the l.u.s.t of the chase. As I pushed into the dingy little room Solon halted in his walk and, with a flourish that did not entirely lack the dramatic, he handed me the narrow strip of paper. The item was brief.

"Mrs. J. Rodney Potts, the estimable wife of Colonel J. Rodney Potts of this town, will arrive here from the East next Thursday to make her home among us."

I looked up, to find them eager for my comment.

"Is it true?" I asked.