Willie Case had been taken to Payson to testify before
the coroner's jury investigating the death of Giova's
father, and with the dollar which The Oskaloosa Kid
had given him in the morning burning in his pocket had
proceeded to indulge in an orgy of dissipation the moment
that he had been freed from the inquest. Ice
cream, red pop, peanuts, candy, and soda water may
have diminished his appetite but not his pride and self-satisfaction
as he sat alone and by night for the first
time in a public eating place. Willie was now a man of
the world, a bon vivant, as he ordered ham and eggs
from the pretty waitress of The Elite Restaurant on
Broadway; but at heart he was not happy for never before
had he realized what a great proportion of his anatomy
was made up of hands and feet. As he glanced
fearfully at the former, silhouetted against the white of
the table cloth, he flushed scarlet, assured as he was that
the waitress who had just turned away toward the
kitchen with his order was convulsed with laughter
and that every other eye in the establishment was glued
upon him. To assume an air of nonchalance and thereby
impress and disarm his critics Willie reached for a tooth-pick
in the little glass holder near the center of the table
and upset the sugar bowl. Immediately Willie
snatched back the offending hand and glared ferociously
at the ceiling. He could feel the roots of his hair being
consumed in the heat of his skin. A quick side glance
that required all his will power to consummate showed
him that no one appeared to have noticed his
faux pas
and Willie was again slowly returning to normal when
the proprietor of the restaurant came up from behind
and asked him to remove his hat.
Never had Willie Case spent so frightful a half hour
as that within the brilliant interior of The Elite Restaurant.
Twenty-three minutes of this eternity was consumed
in waiting for his order to be served and seven
minutes in disposing of the meal and paying his check.
Willie's method of eating was in itself a sermon on
efficiency—there was no lost motion—no waste of time.
He placed his mouth within two inches of his plate
after cutting his ham and eggs into pieces of a size that
would permit each mouthful to enter without wedging;
then he mixed his mashed potatoes in with the result
and working his knife and fork alternately with bewildering
rapidity shot a continuous stream of food into his
gaping maw.
In addition to the meat and potatoes there was one
vegetable in a side-dish and as dessert four prunes. The
meat course gone Willie placed the vegetable dish on
the empty plate, seized a spoon in lieu of knife and
fork and—presto! the side-dish was empty. Whereupon
the prune dish was set in the empty side-dish—four deft
motions and there were no prunes—in the dish. The entire
feat had been accomplished in 6:341/2, setting a
new world's record for red-headed farmer boys with one
splay foot.
In the remaining twenty five and one half seconds
Willie walked what seemed to him a mile from his seat
to the cashier's desk and at the last instant bumped into
a waitress with a trayful of dishes. Clutched tightly in
Willie's hand was thirty five cents and his check with a
like amount written upon it. Amid the crash of crockery
which followed the collision Willie slammed check and
money upon the cashier's desk and fled. Nor did he
pause until in the reassuring seclusion of a dark side-street.
There Willie sank upon the curb alternately cold
with fear and hot with shame, weak and panting, and
into his heart entered the iron of class hatred, searing
it to the core.
Fortunately for youth it recuperates rapidly from mortal
blows, and so it was that another half hour found
Willie wandering up and down Broadway but at the
far end of the street from The Elite Restaurant. A motion
picture theater arrested his attention; and presently,
parting with one of his two remaining dimes, he
entered. The feature of the bill was a detective melodrama.
Nothing in the world could have better suited
Willie's psychic needs. It recalled his earlier feats of
the day, in which he took pardonable pride, and raised
him once again to a self-confidence he had not felt since
be entered the ever to be hated Elite Restaurant.
The show over Willie set forth afoot for home. A
long walk lay ahead of him. This in itself was bad
enough; but what lay at the end of the long walk was
infinitely worse, as Willie's father had warned him to
return immediately after the inquest, in time for milking,
preferably. Before he had gone two blocks from the
theater Willie had concocted at least three tales to account
for his tardiness, either one of which would have
done credit to the imaginative powers of a Rider Haggard
or a Jules Verne; but at the end of the third
block he caught a glimpse of something which drove
all thoughts of home from his mind and came but
barely short of driving his mind out too. He was approaching
the entrance to an alley. Old trees grew in the
parkway at his side. At the street corner a half block
away a high flung arc swung gently from its supporting
cables, casting a fair light upon the alley's mouth,
and just emerging from behind the nearer fence Willie
Case saw the huge bulk of a bear. Terrified, Willie
jumped behind a tree; and then, fearful lest the animal
might have caught sight or scent of him he poked his
head cautiously around the side of the bole just in
time to see the figure of a girl come out of the alley behind
the bear. Willie recognized her at the first glance—she
was the very girl he had seen burying the dead man
in the Squibbs woods. Instantly Willie Case was transformed
again into the shrewd and death defying sleuth.
At a safe distance he followed the girl and the bear
through one alley after another until they came out upon
the road which leads south from Payson. He was across
the road when she joined Bridge and his companions.
When they turned toward the old mill he followed them,
listening close to the rotting clapboards for any chance
remark which might indicate their future plans. He
heard them debating the wisdom of remaining where
they were for the night or moving on to another location
which they had evidently decided upon but no
clew to which they dropped.
"The objection to remaining here," said Bridge, "is
that we can't make a fire to cook by—it would be too
plainly visible from the road."
"But I can no fin' road by dark," explained Giova. "It
bad road by day, ver' much worse by night. Beppo no
come 'cross swamp by night. No, we got stay here til
morning."
"All right," replied Bridge, "we can eat some of this
canned stuff and have our ham and coffee after we
reach camp tomorrow morning, eh?"
"And now that we've gotten through Payson safely,"
suggested The Oskaloosa Kid, "let's change back into
our own clothes. This disguise makes me feel too conspicuous."
Willie Case had heard enough. His quarry would remain
where it was over night, and a moment later Willie
was racing toward Payson and a telephone as fast as his
legs would carry him.
