Читать книгу Westy Martin on the Mississippi - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 3

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“Norris Cole is under a cloud,” said Mr. Martin decisively, as he entered the living room with the Sunday papers tucked under his arm. “And as for you, my son—well, Mr. Cole thinks you’ve been a party to the whole affair.”

Westy was dumbfounded and looked it. He hunched his body up in the big chair, then frowned. “Gosh, he’s got a nerve. What’s the big idea?”

Mr. Martin leisurely seated himself upon the long divan and looked searchingly at his son’s face. “Something has been discovered since Mrs. Cole called us this morning to tell us that Norris hadn’t been home all night.”

“What?” queried Westy, cold with an unnamed fear.

“There’s five thousand dollars missing from Mr. Cole’s safe,” he answered quietly. “Five thousand dollars in twenty dollar bills. Old Brower had counted it and put it in an envelope. The safe was open while you boys were in the store, but he didn’t discover the loss until he was ready to close up. Then he called up Mr. Cole about it but nothing was said to Mrs. Cole until about an hour ago.”

Westy was indignant. “Gosh, that’s going some—do they mean to say that I had anything to do with that money?” he shouted.

“Calm down,” said his father. “Nothing of the kind was implied about you. Mr. Cole merely said that Brower had remembered the safe being open while you and Trainor and his friends were in the store. That was after Norris had left for the movies.”

“Then why is Norrie under a cloud if he wasn’t there?” Westy demanded to know. “Mr. Cole has some nerve to....”

“Hold on, son,” said Mr. Martin patiently. “Mr. Cole is taking facts and summing them up in just the same way that you or I would sum them up under the circumstances. Now wait until you hear what he told me: First, Norris demanded that his father give him permission to go to the movies, thereby leaving them shorthanded in the store. And Saturday night, as you know, is their busiest time.”

“Oh, I know all that,” said Westy, restlessly. “I was there when he asked his father and I heard all the argument that went on. Does Mr. Cole think I put him up to do that?”

Mr. Martin shook his head. “Not exactly, but he does think that you made Norris restless with your talk of adventure on the Mississippi. He said that Norris never before demanded anything—he always asked.”

“Hmph!” said Westy, with utter disgust “Norrie’s not a baby. He’s seventeen. I’d have a swell chance of leading him into something he didn’t want to do—anyway, it wasn’t any crime for me to tell him what fun he could have if he went down the Mississippi.”

“I should say it wasn’t,” smiled Mr. Martin patiently. “But you can’t blame Mr. Cole for feeling that this thing wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t come back with your vivid word pictures of flood times on the Mississippi.”

Westy shrugged his shoulders. “He’d have gone away, anyhow,” he said, sullenly. “He told me the first day I met him that he was getting sick of working for his father and not getting anything. Gosh, he never went anywhere.”

“Perhaps that is so,” said Mr. Martin, thoughtfully, “but I do wish he had arranged his disappearance before you got back to Bridgeboro. Now it appears that you are the logical one to blame it on since Trainor has also disappeared. His father and mother haven’t seen him since dinner-time yesterday.”

Westy whistled with surprise. “And the money—do they think he has anything to do with it?”

“They think Trainor and Norris planned this together.”

“I don’t believe it—not about Norris anyway.”

“Well, the police believe it. They’ve handled a good many cases where a loafing boy like Trainor can lure an adventure-seeking boy like Norris into just such predicaments. And the missing money seems to be the crux of the whole affair. Mr. Cole seems to think that Trainor would be capable of planning that and Norris knowing Brower’s movements on Saturday nights seems to bear out the theory that it was a premeditated disappearance.”

Westy scoffed that idea silently. “It’s a coincidence, that’s what it is,” he insisted.

“I’d say it was anything but that,” smiled Mr. Martin. “I’ve saved the last apple out of the bag to shatter that notion, son, for the police have found out that Norris and Trainor met on the ten o’clock bus bound for New York. The driver knows them and remembers well that he let them out in front of the Pennsylvania station. Now you can see why Mr. Cole resented you setting the Mississippi bee buzzing in Norris’ ears.”

Westy was silent, but none the less amazed at this latest revelation. “How about Trick’s friends—do they know anything about it?” he asked at length.

“Oh, they’ve maintained a discreet silence through all the questioning they’ve had,” said Mr. Martin, opening up his papers. “A couple of detectives have been giving them quite a grilling, I heard downtown. Chief Hobert said they had told him that they didn’t think the boys had anything to do with it. Their opinion is that Trick Trainor used them as lookouts and had them keep Brower in the front of the store until he got what he was after. They only admitted that Trainor walked back where the safe was a few times.”

“Well, I saw him do that too,” said Westy calmly. “But that doesn’t prove anything. He never sits still or stands still, Trick doesn’t. I don’t like him any more than Mr. Cole but I wouldn’t accuse him of stealing five thousand dollars just because he was walking around the open safe.”

“No, but on the other hand he hasn’t come back to defend this accusation and neither has Norris,” Mr. Martin said, with an air of finality. He read his paper in earnest.

“I wish I had gone with Norrie to the movies now,” said Westy, regretfully. “He wanted me to but I didn’t like the picture. That shows he wasn’t planning anything then when he asked me to go, doesn’t it?”

Mr. Martin appeared not to have heard. He had said all he knew about the matter and apparently had enough of it. But Westy was persistent He rambled on in an abused tone and finally his mother tactfully hurried into the living room, having left her dinner preparations half completed.

“Don’t take on so, Westy,” she said, consolingly, and hurried over to smooth out a wrinkle in the east window curtain. “Facts do not lie and it’s just what one would expect when a nice boy like Norris is swayed by Trick Trainor’s influence.”

“Oh, gosh,” said Westy, despairingly, “you too? Anyone would think that Trick was a gangster or something. Just because he’s been out of High a year and hasn’t worked....”

“Don’t forget how hard he’s worked standing around in front of Pellett’s drug store,” his mother smilingly interposed.

“All right,” Westy admitted freely. “Maybe he has, but there isn’t anyone in Bridgeboro can say that he’s done anything else. Gosh, I’ve sometimes felt pretty sore at Trick with that swaggerish way he has and trying to make other guys feel that they aren’t worth two cents, but I wouldn’t hint that he was crooked unless I knew it—then I’d say it right out.”

“Mrs. Trainor told me that she didn’t ever give him more than two dollars a week for spending money,” said Mrs. Martin. “And of course you realize, Westy, that one can’t travel far on that, much less two.”

Westy was going to answer that they could get as far as New York where they probably were now, but he thought it useless. “You’re all dead set on it that Norrie’s guilty,” he said, angrily, “and I’m dead set on it that he isn’t. Trick’s friends were there as well as me. Why don’t they say that I did it? But no, just because it’s a coincidence that Norrie and Trick decided at the last minute to beat it away together they’re supposed to be thieves too.”

At this thundering statement, Mr. Martin looked up from his paper and frowned. “I think,” he said sternly, “that from this moment on, we’ll leave the troubles of the Cole family to the Coles.”

Westy was duly silenced but not squelched and as his mother hurried back to the kitchen to resume her duties, he arose and sauntered out on the front porch. It was a likely place to regain his usual good temper for there was a brisk March wind blowing and a hint of spring in the air.

He perched himself on the porch railing and tried thinking over the events of the past four days since he had come back from Arizona. “Gosh, it sure looks black enough for them,” he said reflectively. “If Norrie only hadn’t lost his head last night and beat it away so sneaky. But I know him and—why, I can go right back and think of all we talked about Let’s see now....”

He shut his eyes and let his mind drift back to the day, his first day in Bridgeboro in over a year, when he had been standing on that very porch. He had been looking up and down the street in hopes of seeing someone he knew, some familiar face when....