“Perhaps that’s what made them suspicious,” Trenton said. “I heard you threw the cowbells overboard.”
“I had the boxes sent up from the baggage-room and dumped every blessed one of them over into the drink,” Ostrander said. “I cut down every bit of surplus baggage I had, so I didn’t have one darn thing left except wearing apparel, and a few curios that no one could question.”
“But why on earth did you do that?”
“If they were going to get tough I wanted to have the situation simplified. I have an idea that your friend and cabin-mate, Harvey Richmond, is either a spotter for the Government or a freelance informer. I understand some of the fellows who want to stoop that low make a good thing out of traveling on the ocean liners. They strike up an acquaintance with as many passengers as possible, size up the men who may be smuggling something in and then see that the Government is given a tip. They don’t stand to lose anything if things go wrong and in case things are right they make a killing. Some day I’ll run across Mr. Harvey Richmond again when I can ask him a little more about this real estate business of his in the Middle West. I’m free to confess that I thought you’d done some talking about something and... well, the fact that he singled you out for an identical letter seems to cover the situation. Where’s Linda? Did you see her?”
“I saw her going down the gangplank just before the Customs men asked me to walk back to the stateroom.”
“You don’t know what hotel she’s staying at, do you?”
“I don’t think she’s staying. I think friends met her and are driving her to her... er... home?”
“I wanted to say good-by to her.” Ostrander said, and then added casually, “Oh well, I’ll drop her a note. I have her address in Falthaven. It was certainly a great trip. How about sharing a cab?”
“No thank you... I have a few things to attend to here,” Rob said, some strange feeling causing him to refrain from mentioning the matter of the car. If Linda hadn’t told Ostrander, Rob certainly wasn’t going to tell him. Yet Ostrander apparently had Linda’s address and...
“Hang it,” Ostrander answered. “I wanted to see Linda. Oh well, that’s all water under the bridge. Well, Rob, it was a great trip. Thanks for being so generous as to share it with me.”
And Ostrander gripped Rob Trenton’s hand, his eyes smiling and friendly. “Sorry you were so darned sick there in Paris.”
That recalled a situation to Rob Trenton’s mind. “Say,” he said, “you remember those capsules you gave me?”
“Sure. They’d have fixed you right up if they’d stayed with you. They must have bounded off your stomach like a tennis ball off a cement court and...”
“I didn’t take them,” Rob confessed. “I had a particularly violent spell of retching and dropped them in the pocket of my bathrobe. The Customs men searched every...”
“Where are they now?” Ostrander interrupted.
“The Customs men took them.”
Ostrander stood frowning, his face masking his feelings from Rob Trenton. Abruptly he turned, said, “Oh well, they’ll probably be dumb enough to analyze them. Well, so long, Rob. I’m on my way.”
He walked off, his long legs taking great strides — a big man going some place in one hell of a hurry.
Chapter 7
Rob Trenton counted the minutes until he could get out of the congested lanes of city traffic and find less crowded roads. Curled up in the rear seat, Lobo slept with his head on his paws. The dog now had sufficient confidence in his new master to accept whatever his new environment might be with complete assurance.
The car whined on through the night. Gradually the lights of approaching automobiles became more infrequent. At first there were breaks in the procession of approaching cars, then gradually the distance between the cars themselves became greater, until finally there were intervals up to as much as several minutes at a time when Rob Trenton’s eyes were spared the glare of approaching headlights.
Just as Rob Trenton dared to make an estimate as to the time he would arrive at the little farmhouse where he maintained his kennels, he felt the car swerve to the right, heard the bang of a blown-out tire and then was fighting the wheel to hold the machine straight on the road while he angled off to one side, touching the brakes at intervals very gently until he had the car well over on the verge.
The dog, up on all fours at the unexpected swing, was peering through the windshield.
Rob brought the car to a stop, quieted the dog, got out tools, jacked the car up and started to work.
It was while he was changing the tire that he first noticed the peculiar bulge on the underside of the car’s frame.
It seemed to be a smooth swelling in the metal, evidently housing some sort of a gear box, but there was certainly no evidence to indicate that any mechanism was supposed to be concealed under the swelling. Rob conducted an exploratory tapping with the handle of the wrench. The metal “blister” seemed to be hollow.
The little flashlight was getting dim, but curiosity and a certain cold suspicion brought decision to Rob Trenton’s mind.
He drove to the next town where he was able to procure a cold chisel and hammer, a larger flashlight and fresh batteries.
Ten miles down the road he again stopped the car, waited until there was a complete break in the traffic, then crawled under the car, adjusted the flashlight and tapped at the border of the steel blister with the edge of the cold chisel held firmly in position.
The blister peeled off as though it had been half a melon and a cascade of packages wrapped in oiled silk dropped to the highway.
Rob Trenton had no need to examine these oiled silk packages to know what they were.
A disillusioning bitterness filled Trenton until there was even the taste of it in his mouth. So he had been used as an unwilling accomplice. There actually had been some foundation for those anonymous letters which had been sent to the Customs.
Yet Rob could hardly picture Linda Carroll as a smuggler. He felt that she herself must have been victimized. And, having reached that decision, he knew that he must protect her against a premature discovery. Not until he had unearthed the real criminal could Linda be permitted to know what had happened. And, in the meantime, no matter what the cost, the authorities must be kept from any further search. Their suspicions already aroused, it would only be a short time before they would think of the car in which Linda Carroll, Merton Ostrander and Rob Trenton had made their European tour.
Rob’s palms were cold with perspiration as he thought of what would happen if some State Police patrol car, seeing his machine stopped by the side of the road, should pull up alongside and seek the cause of the trouble.
There was a short-handled shovel in the tool kit, one which had been carried through Europe in case of emergencies; and now in a frenzy of desperation Rob Trenton took the shovel from its place, moved over to the side of the road, near the fence, removed the sod, and quickly dug a hole some two feet deep, wrapped the oiled silk packages in a newspaper, shoved the whole thing down in the hole, placed the metal disc on top, and replaced the dirt as best he could. Then he fitted into place the circle of sod which he had carefully cut when he started the hole.
He checked the mileage on the speedometer of the little car, then with his pocket knife made a little blaze on a wooden fence post at the roadside.
Then he opened his notebook and drew a sketch map showing the exact location where he had stopped the car. A road sign some fifty feet ahead of the car gave mileages to the cities ahead and Rob carefully copied these distances in his book as well as the number of fence posts between the car and the sign.