CHAPTER III.

A STRANGE MAN AT A WINDOW.

Late that afternoon, at four o’clock to be exact, Renfro Horn entered the circulation manager’s office. Behind him lay a line of offices thru which he had passed, and a line of men with whom he had argued and urged his way to this seeming potentate of The Globe.

“Mr. Bruce doesn’t see applicants for routes” he had been told exactly seven times.

But now he was in Mr. Bruce’s office and looking directly at that man, who was dictating a letter to Miss Newell, his stenographer. Renfro with his hat in his hand stared around the big room, as simply and well furnished as his own father’s private office. He liked the pictures on the walls--some of which were the originals from which the Globe’s daily cartoons had been made and others, photographs of men famous in the newspaper world, who had started their careers as route carriers.

Renfro was studying a photograph of a full faced man with a high forehead when Mr. Bruce finished his letter and looked at him. And he liked him immediately for the boyish way he had of smiling, the cordial gleam in his eyes and the sincere tone of his voice while he had dictated.

“I’m Renfro Horn,” he said, “and I want to buy a route if there is one vacant.”

Mr. Bruce started. “Oh, yes,” he narrowed his eyes and Renfro realized that he felt those same shrewd eyes grasping for his past, his present and future ability all at once. “Any particular part of town, son?”

“Yes sir, out south whenever there’s a vacancy, Mr.--”

“Bruce” finished the other.

“I would like to have the Washington Avenue route--the one farthest out,” Renfro finished.

“Who told you it was vacant?”

Renfro’s eyes flashed. “Is it right now?” he asked and added, “I was afraid I would have to wait a while for it.”

“Some fellow has been stringing him on that route,” George Bruce thought immediately. Out loud he began, “Now, son--”

Then he remembered the promise he had made Renfro’s father. This was a worse route even than the one he had in mind when he had talked to Mr. Horn that morning. It was a dead loss. Pride alone kept George Bruce from stopping that route. The Globe’s rival paper claimed that they made money on their paper in that part of town, and until he had discredited that claim George Bruce was determined to keep that route alive.

Yet only that morning Andy Andrews had announced that after today he would make no more trips on that route. Here before him was his salvation. Mr. Horn had wanted his boy to make a failure. All day whenever George Bruce remembered the interview that morning he had hoped the boy would succeed. Now after he had seen Renfro he wanted him more than ever to succeed. “And he hasn’t a chance there,” he admitted to himself.

“You won’t make much money out there at first, son,” he talked slowly. “In fact the boy who has been out there has lost so much that he gave up the route this morning.”

“I can build it up,” Renfro’s eyes held entreaty.

George Bruce nodded. “Slowly,” he returned.

“Do I get it?”

Robert Bruce looked up and down Renfro’s sturdy body, at his determined dark blue eyes, at his boyish stern mouth. “Yes,” he answered, “and if you make good out there you can have your choice of any route in town.” He turned to Miss Newell. “Call Morrison, please.”

He was still studying Renfro when Morrison, the route manager, for the south side of Lindendale entered the office. “This is Renfro Horn, Morrison,” he told the younger man. “He is to have Old Grief route. Andrews gave it up this morning.”

“Yes sir, he was telling me so,” Morrison looked keenly at Renfro. “He’s waiting now to take some other boy out to teach him the route. Shall I take him?” he nodded at Renfro.

“Renfro Horn” the circulation manager supplied the missing name. “Yes, do, please.”

In the outer office Renfro asked permission to telephone his father. “I don’t want them to worry if I’m late” he explained.

“Oh, you’ll be late all right.” Morrison laughed easily. “Andy’ll tell you about that.”

When Renfro came back from the telephone Morrison had completed his survey of him. “You’ve got good legs, Horn,” he admitted, “and can walk that route. It’s all over everywhere. Now get good ears, listen to what Andy tells you tonight and I tell you later. We’ve got lots of tough customers out there, and I want you to watch them. See?”

“And say,” he went on before Renfro could answer, “I don’t like your name. It sounds too much like a map name. Get something human to use for a carrier name. Ever have a nickname?”

Another question without an answer--all due to the speed with which he talked. “I’ll give you a good one--Hooch, if you please--Hooch Horn. Sounds good--doesn’t it? It has a business like twang to it. So I’ll just let it go.”

He hurried “Hooch” out to the hall in which Andy was waiting. He introduced the two boys, gave them car fare to the station at which their papers were delivered and hurried them away. “I’m giving you the east route you asked for, Andy,” he said, “but it will cost you something rather high. Old Grief is the only route the Globe has to give away.”

Andy chatted all the way out to the station. A steady stream of questions followed his description of what he termed “the poorest paying and hardest route in the city.”

Who had wished Old Grief on Renfro? How had Morrison gotten hold of him? Would he ask for another route as he went broke on Old Grief? And finally how much experience had he had with route work?

Renfro, recently christened “Hooch,” evaded all direct answers. It was almost dusk when they reached the station. He helped Andy tear open the two packages of papers waiting for them there, stuff them into the paper bag and carry them down the street.

“We’ll throw them tonight,” Andy was a virtual dictator this last trip of his. “But when it’s windy or rainy you want to be sure to get them on the porch. Nobody wants to come out here to run down complaints.”

“There’s the worst dead beat in town, Hooch,” he pointed toward a shot gun house far back in a narrow yard. “He’ll try to get you--does every new boy. Turn him down. He owes me $1.65.”

They turned the corner and Andy pointed down the street, “Out there--” his finger went out directly in a line with his face--“there in that big old house lives the queerest man in the country. No, not in the house” he corrected himself, “it’s too rummy a shell for anybody to live in. But in a cabin out there. I went out last night and bought six rabbits and every one of ’em was shot clean thru the head--the prettiest shots I ever saw. Go out some time.”

“Was he in the shack you say?”

“Yep,” Andy rolled the paper for the next customer, “I went to the door but I didn’t get in. It looked interesting but he shut the door while he hunted out my rabbits. Queer old bird!”

Renfro wished that their route took them out to the white house so that he could see whether or not there was a light there tonight. In the library at noon he had walked past the case of old coins and was reminded of the counterfeiting story Clint had told him.

If Captain Pete’s brother had returned he might be making that sort of coin again. But his thoughts were cut short by an exclamation from Andy. A heavy set old man leading a dog by a heavy strap, had jostled into them. The dog barked sharply and tugged at the strap, but the man quieted him without a jerk or command--just a simple Scotch name muttered in a tone rich with a Scotch accent “Lang Tammy.”

And the dog had followed him obediently.

“That old Bird’s a new inhabitant out here,” Andy stared after the pair. “Suppose he’ll be wanting to start the paper, Hooch. Look out for him, and get his money first. Remember what they say about the perils of parting a Scotchman and his money.”

Renfro tried to watch the old man with occasional glances over his shoulder but Andy raced him along. The old man had not turned off the long street when he disappeared in the dusk.

“I don’t believe I’ll remember all these places,” Renfro ventured to remark.

“Then forget the ones who owe accounts.” Andy laughed facetiously and hurried still more. “This is a case where I’m not prolonging any fond farewells,” he ended slyly. “Will you, Hooch, when you leave?”

“Oh, I’ll stay,” retorted Renfro and again Andy laughed.

Renfro thought of that laugh the next afternoon as he passed along the route. And it was a long, slow trip. He had remembered very few houses at which Andy had left the Evening Globe. After trying to make out landmarks which he remembered from the night before and failing to do so Renfro had adopted his own way of locating customers.

When in doubt he merely went to the front door and asked their names and what paper they took.

The street lights were on when he reached Wayne Street--the street Andy had termed the aristocratic portion of his route. “Everybody takes the paper here and everybody pays for it,” he had given the information proudly, “Even to Judge Wier, the old duffer.”

“Paying promptly is his policy,” Andy tried to be witty. “The fellows he sentences in court can tell you that, and he gives generous tips besides payment in full.”

At the corner Renfro slipped off his gloves and blew on his fingers to warm them. The wind was losing its volume, but the temperature was dropping. The ice in the gutter had a hard, unmelting look. Little flurries of snow played around the light globe like myriads of tiny bugs in summer.

“I’ll fold my papers at the drug store tomorrow evening,” Renfro growled. Andy might have told him that. He might have been a little more definite, too, in showing him the route.

A big, wooly dog brushed past him and ran down the street. “Lang Tammy” Renfro remembered the name the Scotchman had used the afternoon before, “I wonder if that could be he. He was just about that size. He--”

And then he stopped abruptly in the middle of the block. Directly across the street from him was Judge Wier’s old fashioned brick house. The front room was dark, but the room back of it was lighted and the window blind raised more than half way.

The light coming from it struck the shrubbery and showed a dark figure lurking there. The house next door was dark. Walking slowly on so as not to arouse the lurking figure’s suspicion, Renfro watched him stealthily.

Suddenly the light in the room was dimmed, and the front room became brilliantly lighted. At the same minute the lurking figure slouched out of the shrubbery, close to the window with the raised blind and stood there quietly staring into the room for a few minutes. And then he slouched back into the shrubbery again.