CHAPTER II.

RENFRO WANTS A NEWSPAPER ROUTE.

When Renfro did manage to speak he asked his mother another question. “What time was that, mother?”

Mrs. Horn studied a minute. The question annoyed her but she was too well bred not to answer it. “Oh, about five, I should imagine. I waited until four thirty for you before I left the house, and I was back at half past five. Why do you ask, Renfro?”

Instead of answering her, Renfro asked another question. “Are you sure it was Captain Pete, mother? You know he is old now and changed and--” he hesitated and finished lamely, “It might have been some one else.”

His mother’s high bred voice was impatient. She wanted to dismiss the subject and discuss finances with her husband, showing him her need for a larger allowance. “Of course, I am sure it was Captain Pete. Haven’t I bought turkeys of him for five seasons? Of course, he looks old now. He looked that way the first time I saw him. And, Renfro, please be still and let your father and me talk about something much more important.”

The steel like edge to her words clipped off any further questions Renfro wanted to ask. But tho he couldn’t ask them out loud they surged back and forth in his mind while he ate. Could he have been mistaken about the time he saw Captain Pete in the woods? Had it taken him and Clint a longer time to walk to the car line than it did him when he was alone?

And if it did, then why was Captain Pete unwilling to sell any of the twenty-two rabbits?

Now there had been the three quails. Renfro was sure that Captain Pete saw him staring at them. Could he have recognized Mrs. Horn and been afraid that Renfro might tell her about the quails? A denial of having hunted might throw them off the track should they feel it their duty to report to the game warden what Renfro had seen.

But Renfro smiled at his own last conclusion. Captain Pete Hall was too wise a man to believe that. Also he was too greedy to miss the chance of selling any of his game.

But Renfro’s thoughts were diverted from the old hunter and the inhabitant of the big old house by his father who directed a question to him. The discussion with his wife over finances reminded Mr. Horn that his son too had an allowance. “Keeping your book so that it balances this month?” he clipped out his words, “And did you save anything last?”

“Yes sir,” Renfro smiled. “I saved half of my allowance last month. I want to buy--”

“Some new detective stories.” Mr. Horn laughed and turned the conversation back to his wife again.

Renfro felt as if he could not stand it a minute longer. With a low apology he rose from the table and then they noticed him. “Renfro,” his mother spoke sharply, “You are not to go out of the house tonight--not even to walk around the yard.”

His father curtly repeated her command. And with sinking heart Renfro left the room, wandered thru the library and dragged his feet up the stair way to his own room. It was only half past seven o’clock. And he did not want to read.

He walked to the window and opened it. The cold air sharpened his brain. He looked over to the south. Yes, that was the right direction. Just three miles from the court house tower was Captain Pete’s tumbling ancestral mansion and the little shack in which Renfro and the old man, before he had gotten so grouchy, had once roasted potatoes and meat.

“I’m sure it was Captain Pete and I’m sure it was about five o’clock when I saw him. Now mother must have been mistaken--” he began to think and then stopped.

Slowly he closed the window. “Mother,” he spoke out loud deliberately, “saw some one else. Pete has rented that big house or been scared out of it, or some one who knows how secluded a life Pete lives, has discovered that he is down in the shack for the winter and is making the big house his headquarters.”

His hands went deep into his pockets. His mind began to make definite plans for ways and means to solve the mystery of the stranger whom he was sure his mother had seen. He himself would watch the house and also the shack. There was still the possibility that Captain Pete might have hurried home and he, Renfro, might have mistaken the time a few minutes.

In that case there was something mysterious about the shack and Captain Pete did not want him to make any more trips or visits there, giving as an excuse that it was his new home. “But I’m going out there tomorrow afternoon,” he began, “and every other afternoon and evening I can, only first I’ll have to find an excuse which will satisfy the folks.”

For half an hour he worked framing excuses for those trips. And then Mary, the second maid, brought one directly to his room. Mary was a woman with imagination and romance, she said, tho in her form she was fat and homely and of Scotch descent. Cautiously she tapped at Renfro’s door.

“Here’s the Evening Globe, Mr. Renfro,” she whispered, thrusting the folded paper into his hand. “Right on the front page there’s more about that big jewel robbery. Them hired detectives don’t seem to get nowhere with their clues and I thought mebbe me, with my imagination, and you so clever in workin’ out mysteries, we could beat them once. It would show--”

But Renfro didn’t hear the rest of her hopes. The paper clasped in his hand became the master key to the mysterious house. It had reminded him of the carrier boys, who had ridden home on the car with him.

They knew their routes like he did his school books. He would buy a route--this particular suburban route which lay closest to the old Hall home. None of his trips past it would arouse suspicion then.

He clapped his hands. He would ask his father’s permission the first thing in the morning. Experience had taught him that it was no time to make requests directly after an argument between his father and mother. But his father’s ill humor didn’t last long. By morning he would be his dignified, businesslike and his exceedingly fair self again.

Renfro was right in that surmise. Smiling, almost affable, his father offered his son half of the morning paper when he entered the dining room for breakfast. But Renfro shook his head. “I want to talk about a job, Dad,” he said. “I want your permission to buy a paper route, one of the Evening Globe’s.”

His mother answered his request. Such an unheard of thing was out of the question. None of the boys on their street, none of the sons of the people in their set, ever thought of such undignified proceedings. And she would not allow her son to do it either.

“Well,” his father’s eyes twinkled, “Don’t pay too much for it. Buy a cheap one and see how well it wears.”

A direct look at his wife quieted her on the subject. After Renfro had left the room he explained his stand. “The only way to stop that kid,” he shook his head, “is to let him have enough of anything. I’ll see he gets enough of that paper carrier business right in the start. I’ll stop on my way down and see the circulation manager of The Globe. I’ll tell him to give Renfro the toughest proposition of a route he has. A week from now our worries will be over.”

In the circulation manager’s office an hour later he explained his errand. “His mother doesn’t want him to carry a route,” said Mr. Horn. He couldn’t tell his own stand to this shrewd business like young fellow, “and I promised her I’d see he didn’t carry one long,” he added. “Give the boy the first one you have which is a tough deal. And rough it up on him all you can.”

“Mr. Horn,” George Bruce looked directly into the older man’s eyes, “we have some routes which don’t need the least bit of roughing up to make them tough propositions for men like me and even you. One is vacant right now. The business manager wants me to drop that route, and I’ve almost decided to do so since it has long been a dead loss on our hands.”

He thumped his fist on the table. “I’m going to put your son out there, and because I still believe that that route can be made into a paying proposition I’m going to expect him to make good. I’m doing what you ask me to do--am I not?”

“And,” he continued after Mr. Horn had given him a hesitant nod, “If he fails you will have your wish; if he succeeds I’m going to have mine.”

He didn’t speak again until Mr. Horn was out of the room and then he swung around in his swivel chair and faced his alert stenographer. “Miss Newell,” he said, and there was a gleam of interest in his keen blue eyes, “I’m anxious to see that boy. Mr. Horn’s a king of finance. Mrs. Horn is a society queen. The young prince--well, let’s see how he wears the family coronets.”