“So did I,” admitted Frannie, “and I believe most people do who have read the Bible as carelessly as I have.”
“Well, I guess that is true, but it’s thrilling to realize that the times of those things may be almost upon us. And, of course, there were ancient prophecies fulfilled when Christ came to earth the first time. I remember studying that around Christmastime when I was a little kid in Sunday school. But nobody talked to me then about any coming back again. I always thought things were just going on and on this way till sometime there would come a day of judgment and then there would be heaven.”
“Yes, I guess I thought so, too,” said Frannie. “Of course they didn’t study about anything like that in college, not even in the Bible course. It was mostly like a history course with some poetry mixed in.”
“Yes, that’s about the size of it. But I didn’t take a Bible course. In our university it was known as one of those easy make-shifts taken to escape really hard work. Of course, engineering was my major, and I just took what went with it. But I see my mistake now. Of course if the Bible really is the Word of God, as my mother taught me, it should be the most important!”
“Yes,” said Frannie, “I suppose it should. I never thought of that. And I have never counted it very important at all, although of course I’ve believed it.”
“Well, you’re one ahead of me,” said the young man gravely. “I’m not sure I have, not always. Though of late, with this war, I’ve been thinking I was wrong to let doubts in. Doubts don’t help the situation much in times like these. Not for men, anyway.”
“No, nor for women either,” said Frannie seriously. “It doesn’t look very happy ahead in life for anybody, does it? Unless there is something to expect like what we heard tonight.”
“That’s right,” said Willoughby.
They walked on till they came to the bridge, and looking down the crystal way, they saw the moon shining, making the path of the river into beaten gold. They stood there for some minutes quietly looking.
“It is a glorious sight, isn’t it?” said the young man. “I keep thinking what Lady Winthrop said about it. She had some Bible verses about the street of the city being pure gold, as it were transparent glass. I can see what she meant now, can’t you? Look down toward the city and see those tall buildings. It isn’t hard to imagine the unearthly beauty of a Heavenly City in this light, with the soft mist of the evening around it. That Lady Winthrop is a remarkable woman, and it doesn’t seem as if she was old in the least. She has the naive childlikeness of a very young person, or she never would have thought of such similes, even with that Bible verse to start on.”
“Yes, she seemed so to me,” said Frannie, “though, of course, I saw her only a few minutes. But I do want to know her better. I thought she was lovely, and I know Mother would love her. I hope we can be friends.”
“I’m sure you will be,” said Willoughby with conviction.
Then suddenly Frannie swung around and looked upstream.
“Look!” she said. “It’s wonderful up this way, too. Those are ‘the eternal hills.’ And see that tower of stone among the evergreens, and the river just below like a sheet of silver. It might be a part of the Heavenly City.”
“Yes, it’s wonderful!” said Willoughby. And then he turned and looked down at her with a great gentleness in his face.
“You’re a bit of poet yourself, aren’t you?” he said with a tender smile in his eyes for the sweet girl.
After a minute or two longer he drew her hand within his arm, and they started on again.
“I’d like to linger here till the moon sets,” he said half wistfully, “but you and I are both working people. We have to get to work early in the morning. I mustn’t keep you up too late. Of course it isn’t to be compared with the hour you would go home from one of Marietta’s dances that she tried to tempt you with, but we aren’t in her class so we won’t worry about that. Besides, I suppose you have to think about not worrying your sick mother by staying too late.”
“Yes,” said Frannie. “You’re very thoughtful and most kind. My mother will appreciate it, I know. As I do also. But it has been very lovely tonight, and I’ve learned a lot. I shall never forget that sermon. It made me feel that the Bible is as real today as when it was written, and that it is for me as much as ever it was for the people in the New Testament days.”
For answer Val Willoughby laid his hand over Frannie’s with a quick, warm pressure.
“I’m glad!” he said, and then added, “I’m glad we went. I think that sermon made me see a lot of things also that I’ve been missing for a long time. Somehow I think that you have helped, too. There’s something in having a friend along who understands.”
“Oh, thank you!” said Frannie. “Yes, I think I do understand. Because it’s something I’ve never had myself and always felt uneasy about it. Only I couldn’t bring it out in the open, because I had to be strong for my mother’s sake.”
They were still for a long time as they walked slowly down the paved way from the bridge, and the bright silver street stretched away to where the softly lit towers and turrets of Lady Winthrop’s imaginary city stood shadowy against a star-pricked dome of blue.
As they turned to go up to the little old white picket gate of the brick house, Willoughby said in a tone that was almost like a sacrament, “I’m glad I have found you. It is good to have you for a friend. In the uncertain days that are ahead of us both perhaps we can figure this thing out together.”
“Oh!” said Frannie softly, and her voice was so soft it was scarcely audible.
And while all this was going on, two men had been waiting silently, back in the shadow of great alder bushes, up several paces from the inland side of the house, one a tall man, and the other burly, with a shovel held in his hard hand, the spoon part of the implement stuck sharply in the ground where the outer frozen crust had been removed for a foot or so. The man was leaning back against the stout handle of the shovel in an interval of his cautious labor. At his feet, well concealed by a pile of snow, lay a worn, old toolbox with a sturdy pickax beside it, both its pointed ends caked with frozen mud and ice.
“We oughtn’t to have come so early,” said the big man. “You don’t have very good sense in your calculations, Mike. I didn’t want any of the family around while we do this.”
“Well, they didn’t any of them go out last Sunday. They went to bed early. Every light out at eight-thirty. I figured they’d do the same this week. But anyhow, don’t you worry. The young dame will be all absorbed in her boyfriend. She won’t notice anything out of the way, and anyway nobody can see us from the house.”
“Okay,” said the other. “But it seems to me you’ve bungled this all the way through. What exactly did that agent say about the owner? Tell me again. Tell me every word.”
“Well, he said he hadn’t heard from him yet. He said the old chap was sick and had gone to a hospital, and he couldn’t get in touch with him.”
“But what did he say about a contract?”
“Said there wasn’t any. Said they just rented the house and paid one month’s rent down. Their month is up the seventh. He said if we paid a lump sum down we could take over, and he’d send a notice to the folks that the place was sold.”
“The seventh! But that’s too late! We’ve got to bring our stuff here now and get going. I’ve got big obligations.”
“Yep. I told him that, and he said there wasn’t no reason in the world, if we wanted to, that we couldn’t bring lumber here and park it on the back of the lot. The tenants never asked how large the lot was. They just wanted the house anyhow. So I told Nick to bring on yer lumber tonight. That okay with you?”
“What? Do you mean he’s bringing it here, tonight, now, in a few minutes? Why, the folks will hear. You can’t get away with that.”
“Oh sure we can. Not just in a few minutes, I don’t mean, for I figured it would take us a couple of hours to get these here wires uncovered and pulled out the way
you want. So I told him to begin to load up around ten and come in by the back road. You couldn’t get a sledge down the river without making a whole lotta noise, and being an unusual sound it might be noticed, wake somebody, you know. But coming in by the back road, if we have them boards carried in, one at a time, and lay ’em down careful-like, there won’t be a sound to give us away. And by morning they’ll only be a pile of old boards. You know all of ’em are weathered stuff. And if they see ’em they’ll just think they never noticed ’em before.”
“Well, maybe so,” said the big man uncomfortably. “But this ain’t the way I intended to work it. I figure on playing safe every step of the way, and we would, too, if you had carried out your part of the bargain. If anything goes wrong on this deal I’ll just lay it to your fault and pay you accordingly, understand that?”
“Say, look here now, you signed a paper saying how much you were willing to give.”
“Sure I did, but there were things you were to do, and you haven’t done one of ’em on time yet.”
“Well, I couldn’t help it, could I, if the old guy got sick and went to some hospital? I done my best to make things come out anyway, though, and I think you’ll find everything okay. The only thing I can’t figure out is how you’re going to get that there mic outta that there cellar. Why, they might discover it was there most any day now, especially when they go to clean the cellar. You know dames like that are apt to be pretty frisky about getting spic and span by spring.”
“It’s not the mic I’m worrying about,” said Granniss. “We could get another easy, but there are incriminating papers, maps, floor plans of defense plants, and other stuff there that we’ve got to have! An’ we’ve got to have ’em before the seventh!”
“I see. But how are you gonta get ’em out without wakin’ up the folks?” asked Mike perplexedly.
“You just leave that to me,” said the older man. “I’m figuring to wait till some dark night when there’s a lotta wind, mebbe even rain, and do a swift job of digging when we start, just tunnel under to that little closet in the cellar and tap the wall. Take out the stuff and the microphone and the recording machine and all and install it in the new shed we’re putting up back here. Doing that, we can go on using the same transmitter that we had before, and nobody the wiser. An’ if the folks in the house discover us working, well, they’re just women, and there are ways of handling them. I don’t intend to stop at anything.”
“You don’t say!” said Mike, looking speculatively across the starlight to the other man, secretly planning to leave any “rough stuff” to his partner in crime. “But how come they didn’t discover your arrangements when these folks took over the house?”
“Oh, we had that all camouflaged inside. Even if the cops had come into the cellar they couldn’t have found it. It was an extra bricked-in addition we built off the far end of the cellar behind the furnace, and it was so finished you couldn’t have found the opening unless you knew how. One loose brick that looked solid as Gibraltar and came out, and then behind a panel there was the keyhole. But even that you wouldn’t have recognized. It was just a sort of slit, and the key was thin as a knife blade. Oh, we had it all fixed up. It was great. And, of course, when nobody lived in this house we could come here any time and use it nearly all night without any danger of discovery.”
“So! That was the way it was!” said Mike thoughtfully to himself, laying up this knowledge for a time when it would be more lucrative to remember certain things than it now was to keep silent about them.
“Now Mike, stop right about there where you are and reach down with your fingers. See if you can strike any wires with your hand yet. I think you ought to have almost got it uncovered.”
Mike got down on his knees and worked away beside his prone shovel, running his hand down farther and father, bringing up handfuls of ashes and small stones.
“Yes,” he said, puffing softly with his exertions, “I think I got her. Two wires, ain’t there? Say? Am I liable to get a shock doin’ this?”
“No, no shock, not to amount to anything. Got the two wires you say? Okay. Then we’re safe. Now while we wait for the lumber, suppose you do a little quiet diggin’. Go slow, not too continuous, you know, else it might attract some dame’s attention. Get as far as you can while we wait and have some bushes and weeds ready to put it all under cover in case somebody should come by. Wait! What’s that sound? That isn’t a cop’s car, is it? Over there in the next street?”
“Naw, that there’s the ten o’clock bus. She stops at that corner for three minutes and then goes on. I got this neighborhood pretty well memorized. You know I don’t go into nothing like this without making sure I won’t get caught. But what I don’t understand is what you said the first day. You spoke about a powder plant, and I can’t just figure how these two things work together.”
“Oh, don’t you? Well, you’re not so foresighted as I thought you were. Don’t you see the easiest way would have been to put up a rough building, call it a powder plant, make a small output of the stuff, enough to throw anyone off the track and have only workmen who are wise to keep their mouths shut. Then we can use our radio all we please without exciting suspicion. That’s why I wanted to buy the place. That would have been the easiest way, besides giving us the look of being deep in defense work. And that’s what we will eventually do as soon as we can get entire possession. But in the meantime, this lumber can be brought in very slowly, a little at a time, until we have enough here to begin to build. Then we can bring our own men here, put up a rough shell in a hurry, and not attract attention. You see, it’s wisest to keep attention away from here as much as possible. After we get the shell of a building up, we can build a soundproof compartment out of sight. Of course if we could buy the house and put the people out of it at once, offer them a bonus or something to do till we get possession. But there are always ways to get people out if you offer enough money. I figure this ain’t any exception. Hey! What’s that? Steps.”
“That’s the young guy bringin’ his gal home. Just lie low. He don’t stay long after he comes. He works early somewheres. Guess I’ll sort of let up till he leaves.”
The big man settled down on the tool chest behind the group of bushes, and the two remained motionless for several minutes, while they watched the lights in the little brick house. Someone came into the kitchen and got a pitcher of water and a tray. They could hear the tinkle of glasses and the clink of pieces of ice. Then the kitchen light went out and there was another interval. But they did not have to wait long until they heard the front door open; voices, footsteps, and then they could hear the young man going down the walk.
“Okay!” said Mike at last in a cautious voice. “The young guy has gone. Now we can work again. It won’t be many minutes before all the lights go out and the house will be asleep.”
“Well, don’t take any chances!” warned the big man. “What time did you say that lumber would arrive?”
“He didn’t say what time exactly. He said he’d be along plenty late so we didn’t needta worry. What’s that?”
Footsteps! Footsteps! Quiet, steady, measured. A low word now and then stopping a moment, then passing slowly by.
“Sounds like cops!” murmured Mike.
“No brass buttons!” murmured Granniss.
The footsteps passed on, and the sound died away indefinably.
After a little Mike peered into the darkness after them.
“Where do you ’spose them two went? There ain’t none of them new houses occupied yet, is there?”
“How should I know? That’s your job. That’s what I hired you for.”
“Well, I guess I’m just getting jittery. I didn’t like the way they stopped walking, but there ain’t anyplace down that way where they could rightly go.”
He got up and straightened his stiff back, took a step or two out toward the street.
“Hi! There, come on back and get to work,” growled Granniss. “They went off toward the bridge. I�
��m almost sure I heard them cross the bridge. Don’t be a fool. You’ll have that lumber on top of your work before you know it, and we don’t want to stay here all night, you know.”
“Keep your shirt on, man! You don’t have to do a thing but sit still and see your orders carried out. And mind this, fella. I’m just as anxious to earn my money as you are to pay it, so pipe down and keep calm. And—there, I hear those footsteps going on now. They were most likely stoppin’ to talk a little before separatin’. One has gone on across the bridge, and the other has likely taken the dirt road where his footsteps wouldn’t sound. Now, let’s get back on the job. You want I should follow them wires now, back to the lean-to on the kitchen? Is that right?”
“Yes. Make it as deep as you can and then cover it over somehow. Little sticks across near together, covered with branches. Snow flung across it. Nobody walks across this place anyway. We’ve checked up on that in the past when we used the empty house.”
“Okay!”
Later there were steps in the distance, but the two men were intent on the trench they were constructing and paid little heed.
The night grew deeper, and the darkness more intense, with only the far, dim stars above in the blackness of midnight blue.
And then, at last, came noiseless wheels and a muffled engine, rolling down the incline of the back street almost imperceptibly, and Mike striding silently across the ruts of the field to stand in the road and wave and point out the stopping place.
Two dark figures slipped from the truck and approached the load, rubber shod, lifting a single board and following Mike into the field behind the brick house. Mike went like a cat across to the place he had just cleared and indicated just where this first board should be placed. It was all done without talk, the directions given by motions, the men all acting as if they had been trained in a school of silence. Just once a board slipped and went down with a thud, and the crew looked fearfully around and crouched near the ground out of sight. Then after an interval, the work went swiftly on till all the boards were neatly piled, low lying, and a few branches scattered over with some snow atop. It was a well camouflaged pile of lumber, and to all casual appearances had been there perhaps all winter. Only one very familiar with the scene would have noticed that the landscape was at all changed. Then the truck that brought them went away like a shadow into the darkness, and after a few minutes the two men slipped as silently away, Mike carrying the old tool chest on his brawny shoulder.
The Street of the City Page 16