A Poor Wise Man by Mary Roberts Rinehart (popular books of all time TXT) 📖

For instance, there were the lists of the various city stores and their estimated contents, missing from Mr. Woslosky’s own inconspicuous trunk in a storage house. On that had been based the plan for feeding the revolution, by the simple expedient of exchanging by organized pillage the contents of the city stores for food stuffs from the farmers in outlying districts.

Revolution, according to Mr. Woslosky, could only be starved out. He had no anxiety as to troops which would be sent against them, because he had a cynical belief that a man’s country was less to him than various other things, including his stomach. He believed that all armies were riddled with sedition and fundamentally opposed to law.

Copies of other important matters, too, were missing. Lists of officials for the revolutionary city government and of deputies to take the places of the disbanded police, plans for manning, by the radicals, the city light, water and power plants; a schedule of public eating houses to take the place of the restaurants.

Woslosky began to find this drug clerk with the ridiculous given name getting on his nerves. He considered him a dangerous enemy to progress, that particular form of progress which Mr. Woslosky advocated, and he suspected him of a lack of ethics regarding trunks in storage. Mr. Woslosky had the old-world idea that the best government was a despotism tempered by assassination. He thought considerably about Willy Cameron.

But the plan concerning the farm house was, in the end, devised by Louis Akers. Woslosky was skeptical. It was true that Cameron might stick his head into the lion’s jaws, but precautions had been known to be taken at such times to prevent their closing. However, the Pole was desperate.

He took six picked men with him that afternoon to the farm, and made a strategic survey of the situation. The house was closed and locked, but he was not concerned with the house. Cusick had told Denslow the meetings were held late at night in the barn, and to the barn Woslosky repaired, sawed-off shotgun under his coat and cigarette in mouth, and inspected it with his evil smile. Two men, young and reckless, might easily plan to conceal themselves under the hay in the loft, and -

Woslosky put down his gun and went down into the cow barn below, whistling softly to himself. He began to enjoy the prospect. He gathered some eggs from the feed boxes, carrying them in his hat, and breaking the lock of the kitchen door he and his outfit looted the closet there and had an early supper, being careful to extinguish the fire afterwards.

Not until dusk was falling did he post his men, three outside among the outbuildings, one as a sentry near the woods, and two in the barn itself. He himself took up his station inside the barn door, sitting on the floor with his gun across his knees. Looking out from there, he saw the sharp flash of a hastily extinguished match, and snarled with anger. He had forbidden smoking.

“I’ve got to go out,” he said cautiously. “Don’t you fools shoot me when I come back.”

He slipped out into what was by that time complete blackness.

Some five minutes later he came back, still noiselessly, and treading like a cat. He could only locate the barn door by feeling for it, and above the light scraping of his fingers he could hear, inside, cautious footsteps over the board floor. He scowled again. Damn this country quiet, anyhow! But he had found the doorway, and was feeling his way through when he found himself caught and violently thrown. The fall and the surprise stunned him. He lay still for an infuriated helpless second, with a knee on his chest and both arms tightly held, to hear one of his own men above him saying:

“Got him, all right. Woslosky, you’ve got the rope, haven’t you?”

“You fool!” snarled Woslosky from the floor, “let me up. You’ve half killed me. Didn’t I tell you I was going out?”

He scrambled to his feet, and to an astounded silence.

“But you came in a couple of minutes ago. Somebody came in. You heard him, Cusick, didn’t you?”

Woslosky whirled and closed and fastened the barn doors, and almost with the same movement drew a searchlight and flashed it over the place. It was apparently empty.

The Pole burst into blasphemous anger, punctuated with sharp questions. Both men had heard the cautious entrance they had taken for his own, both men had remained silent and unsuspicious, and both were positive whoever had come in had not gone out again.

He stationed one man at the door, and commenced a merciless search. The summer’s hay filled one end, but it was closely packed below and offered no refuge. Armed with the shotgun, and with the flash in his pocket, Woslosky climbed the ladder to the loft, going softly. He listened at the top, and then searched it with the light, holding it far to the left for a possible bullet. The loft was empty. He climbed into it and walked over it, gun in one hand and flash in the other, searching for some buried figure. But there was nothing. The loft was fragrant with the newly dried hay, sweet and empty. Woslosky descended the ladder again, the flash extinguished, and stood again on the barn floor, considering. Cusick was a man without imagination, and he had sworn that some one had come in. Then -

Suddenly there was a whirr of wings outside and above, excited flutterings first, and then a general flight of the pigeons who roosted on the roof. Woslosky listened and slowly smiled.

“We’ve got him, boys,” he said, without excitement. “Outside, and call the others. He’s on the roof.”

Cusick whistled shrilly, and as the Pole ran out he met the others coming pell-mell toward him. He flung a guard of all five of them around the barn, and himself walked off a hundred feet or so and gazed upward. The very outline of the ridge pole was indistinguishable, and he swore softly. In the hope of drawing an answering flash he fired, but without result. The explosion echoed and reechoed, died away.

He called to Cusick, and had him try the same experiment, following the line of the gutter as nearly as possible in the darkness, on that side, and emptying his revolver. Still silence.

Woslosky began to doubt. The pigeons might have seen his flashlight, might have heard his own stealthy movements. He was intensely irritated. The shooting, if the alarm had been false, had ruined everything. He saw, as in a vision, Doyle’s sneering face when he told him. Beside him Cusick was reloading his revolver in the darkness.

Then, out of the night, came a call from the direction of the woods, and unintelligible at that distance.

“What’s that?” Cusick said hoarsely.

Woslosky made no reply. He was listening. Some one was approaching, now running, now stopping as though confused. Woslosky held his gun ready, and waited. Then, from a distance, he heard his name called.

He stepped inside the door of the barn and showed the light for a moment. Soon after the sentry floundered in, breathless and excited.

“I got one of them,” he gasped. “Hit him with my gun. He’s lying back by the stone fence.”

“Did you call out, or did he?”

“He did. That’s how I knew it wasn’t one of our fellows. He called Cameron, so he’s the other one.”

Woslosky drew a deep breath. Then it was Cameron on the roof. It was Cameron they wanted.

“He’ll sleep for an hour or two, if he ever wakes up,” Pink’s assailant boasted. But Woslosky was taking no chances that night. He sent two men after Pink, and began to pace the floor thoughtfully. If he could have waited for daylight it would have been simple enough, but he did not know how much time he had. He did not underestimate young Cameron’s intelligence, and it had occurred to him that that young Scot might cannily have provided against his failure to return. Then, too, the state constabulary had an uncomfortable habit of riding lonely back roads at night, and shots could be heard a long distance off.

He had never surveyed the barn roof closely, but he knew that it was steeply pitched. Cameron, then, was probably braced somewhere in the gutter. The departure of the two men had left him short-handed, and he waited impatiently for their return. With a ladder, provided it could be quietly placed, a man could shoot from a corner along two sides of the roof. With two ladders, at diagonal corners, they could get him. But a careful search discovered no ladders on the place.

He went out, and standing close against the wall for protection, called up.

“We know you’re there, Cameron,” he said. “If you come down we won’t hurt you. If you don’t, we’ll get you, and you know it.”

But he received no reply.

Soon after that the two men carried in Pink Denslow, and laid him on the floor of the barn. Then Woslosky tried again, more reckless this time with anger. He stood out somewhat from the wall and called:

“One more chance, Cameron, or we’ll put a bullet through your friend here. Come down, or we’ll - “

Something struck him heavily and he fell, with a bullet in the shoulder. He struggled to his feet and gained the shelter of the wall, his face twisted with pain.

“All right,” he said, “if that’s the way you feel about it!”

He regained the barn and had his arm supported in an extemporized sling. Then he ordered Pink to be tied, and fighting down his pain considered the situation. Cameron was on the roof, and armed. Even if he had no extra shells he still had five shots in reserve, and he would not waste any of them. Whoever tried to scale the walls would be done in at once; whoever attempted to follow him to the roof by way of the loft would be shot instantly. And his own condition demanded haste; the bullet, striking from above, had broken his arm. Every movement was torture.

He thought of setting fire to the barn. Then Cameron would have the choice of two things, to surrender or to be killed. He might get some of them first, however. Well, that was a part of the game.

He delivered a final ultimatum from the shelter of the doorway.

“I’ve just thought of something, Cameron,” he called. “We’re going to fire the barn. Your young friend is here, tied, and we’ll leave him here. Do you get that? Either throw down that gun of yours, and come down, or I’m inclined to think you’ll be up against it. I’ll give you a minute or so to think it over.”

At half-past eleven o’clock that night the first of four automobiles drove into Friendship. It was driven by a hatless young man in a raincoat over a suit of silk pajamas, and it contained four County detectives and the city Chief of Police. Behind it, but well outdistanced, came the other cars, some of them driven by leading citizens in a state of considerable deshabille.

At a cross street in Friendship the lead car drew up, and flashlights were turned on a road map in the rear of the car. There was some argument over the proper road, and a member of the state constabulary, riding up to investigate, showed a strong inclination to place them under arrest.

It took a moment to put him right.

“Wish I could go along,” he said, wistfully. “The place you want is back there. I can’t leave the town, but I’ll steer you out. You’ll probably run into some of our fellows back