The Lookout Man. B. M. Bower
use doctoring the number now. If the man had it, he had it—and it was easy enough to find the car that carried it. Easy enough, too, to prove who was in the car. Jack had named every one of the fellows who were to make up the party. He had to, before his mother would let him take the car. The names were just names to her—since she believed that they were Christian young men!—but she had insisted upon knowing who was going, and she would remember them. She had a memory like glue. She would also give the names to any officer that asked. Jack knew that well enough. For, besides having a memory that would never let go, Mrs. Singleton Corey had a conscience that was inexorable toward the faults of others. She would consider it her duty as a Christian woman and the president of the Purity League to hand those six young men over to the law. That she had been deceived as to their morals would add fire to her fervor.
Whether she would hand Jack over with them was a detail which did not greatly concern her son. He believed she would do it, if thereby she might win the plaudits of her world as a mother martyred to her fine sense of duty. Jack had lived with his mother for twenty-two years, and although he was very much afraid of her, he felt that he had no illusions concerning Mrs. Singleton Corey. He felt that she would sacrifice nearly everything to her greed for public approbation. Whether she would sacrifice her pride of family—twist it into a lofty pride of duty—he did not know. There are queer psychological quirks which may not be foreseen by youth.
Looking back on the whole sickening affair while he sat on the running board and smoked a cigarette, Jack could not see how his mother could consistently avoid laying him on the altar of justice. He had driven the party, and he had stopped the car for them to play their damnable joke. The law would call him an accomplice, he supposed. His mother could not save him, unless she pleaded well the excuse that he had been led astray by evil companions. In lesser crises, Jack remembered that she had played successfully that card. She might try it now. …
On the other hand, she might make a virtue of necessity and volunteer the information that he had in the first place lied about their destination. That, he supposed, would imply a premeditated plan of holding up automobiles. She might wash her hands of him altogether. He could see her doing that, too. He could, in fact, see Mrs. Singleton Corey doing several things that would work him ill and redound to her glory. What he could not see was a mother who would cling to him and cry over him and for him, and stick by him, just because she loved him.
"Aw, what's the use? It'll come out—it can't help it. The cops are out there smelling around now, I bet!"
He arose and worked over the car until it shone immaculately. A lifetime of continual nagging over little things, while the big things had been left to adjust themselves, had fixed upon Jack the habit of attending first to his mother's whims. Mrs. Singleton Corey made it a point to drive her own car. She liked the feeling of power that it gave her, and she loved the flattery of her friends. Therefore, even a murder problem must wait until her automobile was beautifully ready to back out of the garage into a critical world.
Jack gave a sigh of relief when he wiped his hands on the bunch of waste and tossed it into a tin can kept for that purpose. Time was precious to him just now. Any minute might bring the police. Jack did not feel that he was to blame for what had happened, but he realized keenly that he was "in wrong" just the same, and he had no intention of languishing heroically in jail if he could possibly keep out of it.
He hesitated, and finally he went to the house and let himself in through a window whose lock he had "doctored" months ago. His mother would not let him have a key. She believed that being compelled to ring the bell and awaken her put the needful check upon Jack's habits; that, in trailing downstairs in a silk kimono to receive him and his explanation of his lateness, she was fulfilling her duty as a mother.
Jack nearly always humored her in this delusion, and his explanations were always convincing. But he was not prepared to make any just now. He crawled into the sun parlor, took off his shoes and slipped down the hall and up the stairs to his room. There he rummaged through his closet and got out a khaki outing suit and hurried his person into it. In ten minutes he looked more like an overgrown boy scout than anything else. He took a cased trout rod and fly book, stuffed an extra shirt and all the socks he could find into his canvas creel, slung a pair of wading boots over his shoulder and tiptoed to the door.
There it occurred to him that it wouldn't be a bad idea to have some money. He went back to his discarded trousers, that lay in a heap on the floor, and by diligent search he collected two silver dollars and a few nickels and dimes and quarters—enough to total two dollars and eighty-five cents. He looked at the meagre fund ruefully, rubbed his free hand over his hair and was reminded of something else. His hair, wavy and trained to lie back from his forehead, made him easily remembered by strangers. He took his comb and dragged the whole heavy mop down over his eyebrows, and parted it in the middle and plastered it down upon his temples, trying to keep the wave out of it.
He looked different when he was through; and when he had pulled a prim, stiff-brimmed, leather-banded sombrero well down toward his nose, he could find the heart to grin at his reflection.
The money problem returned to torment him. Of what use was this preparation, unless he had some real money to use with it? He took off his shoes again, and his hat; pulled on his bathrobe over the khaki and went out and across to his mother's room.
Mrs. Singleton Corey had another illusion among her collection of illusions about herself. She believed that she was a very light sleeper; that the slightest noise woke her, and that she would then lie for hours wide-eyed. Indeed she frequently declared that she did her best mental work during "the sleepless hours of the night."
However that might be, she certainly was asleep when Jack pushed open her door. She lay on her back with her mouth half open, and she was snoring rhythmically, emphatically—as one would hardly believe it possible for a Mrs. Singleton Corey to snore. Jack looked at her oddly, but his eyes went immediately to her dresser and the purse lying where she had carelessly laid it down on coming home from one of her quests for impurity which she might purify.
She had a little more than forty-two dollars in her purse, and Jack took all of it and went back to his room. There, he issued a check to her for that amount—unwittingly overdrawing his balance at the bank to do so—and wrote this note to his mother:
"Dear Mother:
"I borrowed some money from you, and I am leaving this check to cover
the amount. I am going on a fishing trip. Maybe to Mexico where dad made his stake. Thanks for the car today. "Your son,
"Jack."
He took check and note to her room and placed them on her purse to the tune of her snoring, looked at her with a certain wistfulness for the mothering he had never received from her, and went away.
He climbed out of the house as he had climbed in, and cut across lots until he had reached a street some distance from his own neighborhood. Then keeping carefully in the shadows, he took the shortest route to the S.P. depot. An early car clanged toward him, but he waited in a dark spot until it had passed and then hurried on. He passed an all-night taxi stand in front of a hotel, but he did not disturb the sleepy drivers. So by walking every step of the way, he believed that he had reached the depot unnoticed, just when daylight was upon him with gray wreaths of fog.
By the depot clock it was five minutes to five. A train was being called, and the sing-song chant informed him that it was bound for "Sa-anta Bar-bra—Sa-an Louis Oh-bispo—Sa-linas—Sa-an 'Osay—Sa-an Fransisco, and a-a-ll points north!"
Jack, with his rubber boots flapping on his back, took a run and a slide to the ticket window and bought a ticket for San Francisco, thinking rather feverishly of the various points north.
CHAPTER THREE
TO THE FEATHER RIVER COUNTRY AND FREEDOM
In the chair car, where he plumped himself into a seat