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They were no longer alone. On the threshold of the workshop stood Janoah Eldridge. "So," piped Janoah, "that's what you're doin', is it, Willie Spence? Well, you needn't 'a' been so all-fired still about it. I guessed as much all the time." There was an acid flavor in the words.
The shock of his discovery left him suddenly feeling very sad and very much alone. It was as if he had buried the friend of half a century. Yet even to bring Janoah back he could not retract the words he had uttered or exchange the light he followed for Janoah's sinister beckonings.
"What do you do when you find yourself in a fix like that?" he inquired with interest. "Do?" reiterated Zenas Henry. "What a question! What would any fool do? There ain't no choice left you but to hang head downwards over the stern of the boat an' claw the eel-grass off the wheel with a gaff." Janoah burst into a derisive shout. "Oh, my eye!" he exclaimed. "So that's the way you do it, eh?
They laughed an' said that now the old man was out of the way they could do as they pleased. Then they took all the measurements of your invention, made some sketches, an' took its picter." Willie listened, open-mouthed. "You must be crazy, Janoah," he slowly observed. "I ain't crazy," Janoah replied, with stinging sharpness. "The whole thing was just as I say.
They had uttered them as a laughing prediction, but might they not have rated them as true? With sudden chagrin he looked from Willie to Janoah and from Janoah back to Willie again. "I've been inquirin' up this Galbraith," went on Janoah. "It 'pears he's a big New York shipbuilder that's what he is an' Snellin' is one of his head men."
Probably, however, the most significant string of all was that of stout twine that reached from Willie's shop to the home of Janoah Eldridge, two fields beyond, just at the junction of the Belleport and Harbor roads.
Willie accepted the banter in good part. Born with a forgiving, noncombative disposition he seldom took offence and although Janoah Eldridge, who knew him better perhaps than anyone else on earth did, acclaimed that this tranquil exterior concealed, as did Tim Linkinwater's, unsuspected depths of ferocity, Wilton had yet to encounter its lionlike fury.
Against trust loomed suspicion, against generosity narrowness, against optimism pessimism. Janoah believed the worst of the individual while he, Willie, reason as he might, inherently believed the best.
I ain't so sure, though, but if I was in her place I'd " "There, there, Jan," interrupted Willie nervously, "why go diggin' up the past? The lad is here now an' " "But they have been the devil of a while takin' notice of Tiny," Janoah persisted, not to be coaxed away from his subject.
"An innocent lamb, or a rat in a trap," Janoah said with solemn emphasis. "What are you drivin' at, anyhow?" questioned Willie. "You didn't suspect nothin'?" "Suspect anything? No, of course not. Why?" "You hadn't a suspicion the whole thing was a decoy?" "What whole thing?" "The trip an' all." Willie studied his friend's face in puzzled silence.
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