On the other hand, it was probable that Hank was carrying out Barry’s orders and wouldn’t feel free to do anything without permission from Barry. Maybe it would be better not to precipitate anything until Barry had made up his mind. The fact that Ronald didn’t know what name Barry was using was another obstacle. Anyway, there was that call at the village, which just might offer some new angle on the case. As Ronald still debated, Lister came into the room, and the opportunity was lost for the present.
Just as Ronald was getting ready to leave, Ted arrived back with his report.
“There doesn’t appear to be anything between here and the village to the west, Ron. So I started south, and then worked over toward the east. I found about six or seven cabins and marked them all out on a little map. Nobody was living in them, but a couple of them looked to be in pretty good shape. Somebody could be staying there if he wanted to, though I can’t be sure that is the case.”
“Fine, Ted. That’s just what I wanted to know.”
“Another thing, Ron. I came across Mr. Bogus out on one of his bird walks. He started out to the east, but I came across his trail later. As soon as he was out of sight of the lodge, he immediately switched to the north. It looked to me like he was hiking along, too, not just wandering around looking for birds. I remember that yesterday when I saw him come back he came from the north, too.”
“What’s north of here, Ted?”
“Lonely Valley, I guess—the place Professor Villinger was talking about. I didn’t check up that way for cabins, but I can go out again if you want me to.”
“No, Ted, I don’t think that will be necessary. You’ve done a good job already, and besides I’ve got something else you can do for me. Are you feeling very tired?”
“No, I’ve just got my second wind.”
“Sure your ankle’s not bothering you?” asked Ronald, studying him closely.
“Nary a twinge.”
“Well, then, Ted, here’s what I’d like you to do, if you would. There’s a long-distance call waiting for me down at the drugstore in the village. I’m pretty sure it’s the newspaper calling, and I wonder if you’d like to go down and take it for me. I imagine you could make much better time on your skis than I could hoofing it, but that’s not the important thing. I’d just as soon not give these fellows around here any indication that anything’s in the wind. They’re used to your going out skiing, but they’d all be alerted if I went down. The status quo is rather precarious here, and I don’t want to do anything to upset it.”
“Sure, Ron,” Ted agreed quickly. “Any messages?”
“No, I don’t think so. Tell them anything they want to know except about some of our guesses. I don’t want them coming back to haunt me. One thing, watch out that no one listens in on the telephone call.”
Ted was off again in a few minutes. The sun shone intermittently, and with the temperature still ranging slightly above freezing, the thaw was continuing slowly. However, he had no trouble finding enough glazed, firm snow to support him, and made a good run down to the village.
Taking off his skis and standing them against the wall, he went into the drugstore. Inquiring for a long-distance call for Ronald Wilford, he was told:
“It’s been waiting an hour. You can take it in the first booth over there.”
Ted went into the booth and closed the door after him. No one in the drugstore could overhear him, and there was no switchboard girl, either, other than the one in the telephone exchange building. If she should be listening in, there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
He put the receiver to his ear and dialed the operator. “I’m inquiring about a long-distance call for Ronald Wilford.”
“Is this Ronald Wilford?” she asked.
“No, this is Ted Wilford, his brother, and I’m ready to take the call for him.”
“Just a moment and I will see if the other party will accept you.” There was a various clicking of instruments until the operator said, “On your call to Ronald Wilford, will you accept Ted Wilford instead?”
“That will be satisfactory,” a woman’s voice said.
“Then go ahead with your call, please.”
“Hello, Ted,” said a pleasant voice.
“Hello. This is Ted Wilford.”
“This is Carole Curtis from the office of the Twilight Star. How’s the school newspaper going, Ted?”
He knew she wasn’t inquiring about the school newspaper at long-distance rates, not without a purpose. And her purpose must be to make sure this was really Ted.
“We’re pretty busy putting together our graduation number. Eight pages, with a class picture and all.”
Apparently satisfied, Carole went on, “Ted, I’ve come across something I think Ronald will want to know. First let me ask you, did he ever study French?”
“He had two years in high school.”
“I thought so. Now how do you spell the name of this man who was arrested for robbing the gas station?”
“Why, I suppose it’s d-a-y-m-o-n.”
“Yes, that’s about what I thought. Ronald’s been giving it the French pronunciation, Day-mon. That’s why my eye skipped over it half a dozen times without catching it. Do you know about the graduation program?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you tell Ronald that the name Lawrence Desmond appears on that graduation program. Have you got that? Lawrence Desmond.”
“Yes, I have it.”
“That’s all I wanted, then. Making any progress?”
“Some.”
“Have you found Barry Knight yet?”
“That would be a little hard to say, Carole. The situation is pretty complicated. I think Ron will have something to report to you pretty soon.”
“Three minutes,” the operator interrupted.
“Good-by, Ted,” said Carole.
“Good-by, Carole,” he responded.
He left the store and slowly put on his skis, wondering just what effect this new development was going to have on the case.
CHAPTER 16
Deep-laid Plans
“So Lawrence Desmond graduated from Imperial High School in the class that Barry Knight said he graduated with,” said Ronald, pacing restlessly about their room after Ted had brought him the news. “The funny thing about it is that I have never actually looked at that graduation program myself since the name of Walter Desmond first came into this case. What did Carole think about it?”
“I don’t think she thought very much of your French,” said Ted with a smile.
“Well, if this is so, it certainly sets me up as the prize stupe of the New Year as well as the old. I should have checked that program myself, and even if I didn’t do that I should have been able to work it out by logic. All the time I had this most obvious, most important fact staring me in the face, and I never quite fitted it in.”
“What fact?” asked Ted.
“Why, I don’t think there’s any doubt that Barry Knight is Walter Desmond’s son. It’s hard to say just why I wasn’t able to figure that out from the beginning. I know I picked up the idea that this phony Mr. Knight was Barry’s father, and hung on to it even after Carole and Burnett warned me against it. But all that came later. Right from the beginning there was some reason why I couldn’t connect up Barry Knight with Walter Desmond. The idea was just blocked out of my mind.”
He continued to pace about, then suddenly pounded his fist into his hand. “Say, now I know what it was. The newspaper accounts of the robbery and trial never mentioned that Desmond had a son. A big-city paper certainly would have done that, even though they would have soft-pedaled it a little to preserve the son’s reputation. My trouble is that I’m a big-shot city reporter, and I’ve forgotten my small-town background. A little country newspaper wouldn’t bother printing such an obvious fact that was already known to everybody anyhow.
“Well, I’ve certainly goofed this whole case right from the beginning. I overlooked the biggest clue in the whole affair,
fell for the story of our phony Mr. Knight, put Uglancie’s men on to Barry’s trail—I wonder if there’re any other mistakes I could have made if I’d really tried?”
“You did a lot of things right, too,” said Ted loyally. “Your job was to find Barry Knight, and if he’s the man in the northeast room, then you certainly did that, all right. Uglancie with all his big organization couldn’t find him, but you did it. And you were the first one who got on to that Imperial business and linked up Barry Knight with the gas-station robbery and Walter Desmond. You can’t blame yourself because every piece of the puzzle didn’t fit into place the first time.”
“I suppose that’s right,” said Ronald, a little soothed, “especially when so many of the pieces were missing. Well, the important thing is that I don’t make any more mistakes from now on. Let’s try to reconstruct the whole case from the beginning and see where it leaves us.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed, and Ted did the same.
“First,” Ronald began, “we have Lawrence Desmond living with his father in the small town of Imperial. I suppose he had no mother, since she has never entered the case. The father worked at a gas station, while he tried to perfect his invention on the side. He stole three hundred dollars from the cash register, possibly because he needed it for his invention. Because of an odd circumstance—which was either a boy’s prank or a second attempt at burglary the same night—a broken window attracted attention at the station. The robbery was discovered earlier than Desmond had planned, and because of this he was easily convicted and sent to prison. He did not put up much of a defense at his trial, and I think now that was because he wanted to spare his son’s feelings just as much as he could.
“The son went on to finish high school, then went to the minister and asked for a letter of recommendation, which the minister wrote for him. However, there was a different name on the letter. Let’s see if we can figure that out. I’ve been carrying that letter around in my wallet where I was sure our snoopy friend couldn’t get his hands on it.”
He took the letter from his wallet and smoothed it out on his lap, as Ted watched over his shoulder. Ronald looked puzzled for a few moments, then suddenly he laughed.
“Look at that, Ted—the name Barry. What do you think about it?”
“It’s been erased,” Ted observed.
“That’s it. The first letter has been erased, but because there were several other erasures in the letter I never paid any attention. I don’t think there’s any question but that the minister used the name Larry, and that later the boy changed it to Barry.”
“Kind of a sneaky thing to do,” was Ted’s opinion.
“We can’t be too harsh. We don’t know just what problems the boy was facing. I imagine that he asked for the letter and received it, in good faith. It was only afterward when he was mulling over his troubles that he began to think there would be some advantage in changing his name, and the minister’s use of the friendly, informal nickname gave him an easy opportunity to do it. But that I was so slow in figuring out what happened is just another of my blunders on this case. Are you keeping track of them, Ted?”
“I lost count long ago,” said Ted, who wasn’t averse to teasing his brother a little when the circumstances justified it.
“Anyway, the boy came to the Twilight Star and got a job under the name Barry Knight. At this time, we can’t be sure just what his feelings were toward his father, whether he resented him, felt sorry for him, or felt that his father had been unjustly convicted. We have no proof that Barry ever kept in contact with his father directly, but we do know that he was in close touch through Dixie Orlando. Whether Desmond actually knew anything about his son’s circumstances at this time we can’t say. Maybe he didn’t know for sure, but was able to put a few things together.
“Six years passed, during which Barry Knight rose in the newspaper world, while his father languished in prison and refused to apply for a parole. When the six years was up, two things happened at about the same time. One was that Barry Knight was about ready to close in on Freddie Uglancie, while Uglancie was searching about desperately for something he could pin on Barry Knight. The second thing was that Desmond was released from prison. Now Desmond did not look up his son when he got out of prison. Just why, we can’t be certain—maybe he was afraid his prison record would react unfavorably upon his son’s reputation. Anyway, he went away, and Barry followed him, the trail eventually leading all of us here to Half Moon Lodge.
“Now I don’t think there’s much doubt that Barry Knight was actually afraid of what Uglancie might find out—his whole manner of leaving suggests that. Exactly what did Barry have to be afraid of? Was it his father’s jail sentence? Well, that wasn’t so good, but then it wasn’t so bad, either. His crime wasn’t what we would call a major one, and anyway our society has made enough progress so that we don’t hold a son responsible for what his father may have done. However, the water runs a little deeper than that, for we know that there was another crime in Desmond’s background. Just what it was we don’t know, but it may have been something more serious, something that would explain why he was given such a severe sentence for the gas-station robbery.
“So we know of two crimes on the father’s record. That certainly would have reflected on Barry Knight if the matter came to light, but I still don’t think it would have been enough to damage his reputation very seriously. So we must ask ourselves a question: Was this all? Or was there more crime in Desmond’s background, possibly another serious crime that made him willing to stay in prison until the statute of limitations had expired? And have we reached the end even yet, or is Desmond’s presence here—if he really is here—based upon some new, bigger swindle having to do with his invention? Did Barry Knight come here trying to prevent it? You see, if all these suppositions are true, we’ve about reached the point where Barry cannot hope to cover up for his father any longer. While it’s true that Barry could hardly be blamed for things his father did while Barry was a boy, now that he is grown up, the matter is drastically different. Suppose his father were caught at some big swindle and was exposed. Think how that would reflect on Barry’s reputation. All sorts of insinuations could be made, that he had neglected his father, that he was working with his father, that he knew about it and was covering up for his father, that he was profiting from his father’s crimes. A gossip columnist like Marv Lister could have a Roman holiday on fare like that, particularly if it were made worth his while, and we can bet that Uglancie would see to that. Maybe that was the sort of thing Barry Knight was afraid of all the time.”
“Where do you think Desmond is now, Ron?”
“Well, there’s still a chance that he’s one of the three guests at the lodge. But if not it’s more likely that he’s holed up in a cabin somewhere near here. Since you’ve already explored the cabins to the south and east, I would say the chances are that it’s to the north, perhaps in Lonely Valley. And since our friend Mr. Bogus has been taking a number of bird walks in that direction—though I’m convinced he knows no more about birds than I do and not half as much as Professor Villinger—all the evidence points to him as the probable victim.”
“What do you think the Uglancie crowd is going to do now, Ron?”
“That’s a good question, and I wish I had an answer. One handicap we’re laboring under is that we don’t know how much they know. That they know something is certain, or they wouldn’t be here. But that they don’t know everything is equally certain, or Marv Lister would be home writing his column. I suspect they don’t intend to sit around here idly for an indefinite period of time. On the other hand, they may believe that we aren’t going to be sitting around idly very long either, and they’re waiting for us to make the first move.”
“Then what do we do, try to outsit them?”
“Hm, no, I don’t much care for the idea. It’s not quite in my nature, and I do have a newspaper job I’m supposed to be holding down. Besides, I always feel it’s a good idea to
seize the initiative yourself when you can. It keeps the opposition off balance, wondering what you’re going to do, and they have to plan their moves according to yours. Another angle to it is that we can’t be sure what our own teammate, Barry Knight, is going to do next, either. I wonder if this isn’t the time to play our trump card.”
“You mean something to do with Mr. Knight?”
“Yes. I think it’s important that I make a supreme effort to get in touch with Barry Knight just as soon as I can, and if I’m going to get the opportunity, we’ll have to find some way to draw off Mr. Knight, Lister, and Grossen. They still aren’t sure we’re on to Mr. Knight, so I wonder if we can’t use him to draw them off on a false trail. Let’s look at that map of the cabins you made up.”
Ted produced the paper, and Ronald studied it closely. “I think to the south would be the best direction to try to draw them off, and a cabin about three miles or so away ought to be about the right distance. How many of these cabins would be suitable to stay in overnight?”
“Me and how many others?”
“All four of you, I’m hoping.”
“I noticed one cabin, this one here.” He indicated with his finger. “It was pretty big, and in good condition.”
“Any firewood?”
“Oh, yes, a big stack of it around back. I think they like to keep these cabins stocked up in case any of the vacationers should get lost or injured or something like that. There’s an unwritten law that if you use up firewood you’re supposed to replace it for the next fellow.”
The Star Reporter Mystery Page 13