The Boy Scout | Page 3

not walk he would be obtaining the gratitude
of Sadie by a falsehood. Therefore, he must walk.
"Not at all," protested the young man. "You've got it wrong. What good
will it do your sister to have you sunstruck? I think you are sunstruck.
You're crazy with the heat. You get in here, and we'll talk it over as we
go along."
Hastily Jimmie backed away. "I'd rather walk," he said.
The young man shifted his legs irritably.
"Then how'll this suit you?" he called. "We'll declare that first 'one
good turn' a failure and start afresh. Do me a good turn."
Jimmie halted in his tracks and looked back suspiciously.
"I'm going to Hunter's Island Inn," called the young man, "and I've lost
my way. You get in here and guide me. That'll be doing me a good
turn."
On either side of the road, blotting out the landscape, giant hands
picked out in electric-light bulbs pointed the way to Hunter's Island Inn.
Jimmie grinned and nodded toward them.

"Much obliged," he called, "I got ter walk." Turning his back upon
temptation, he wabbled forward into the flickering heat waves.
* * * * *
The young man did not attempt to pursue. At the side of the road, under
the shade of a giant elm, he had brought the car to a halt and with his
arms crossed upon the wheel sat motionless, following with frowning
eyes the retreating figure of Jimmie. But the narrow-chested and
knock-kneed boy staggering over the sun-baked asphalt no longer
concerned him. It was not Jimmie, but the code preached by Jimmie,
and not only preached but before his eyes put into practice, that
interested him. The young man with white hair had been running away
from temptation. At forty miles an hour he had been running away
from the temptation to do a fellow mortal "a good turn." That morning,
to the appeal of a drowning Cæsar to "Help me, Cassius, or I sink," he
had answered, "Sink!" That answer he had no wish to reconsider. That
he might not reconsider he had sought to escape. It was his experience
that a sixty-horsepower racing-machine is a jealous mistress. For
retrospective, sentimental, or philanthropic thoughts she grants no leave
of absence. But he had not escaped. Jimmie had halted him, tripped
him by the heels and set him again to thinking. Within the half-hour
that followed those who rolled past saw at the side of the road a car
with her engine running, and leaning upon the wheel, as unconscious of
his surroundings as though he sat at his own fireplace, a young man
who frowned and stared at nothing. The half-hour passed and the young
man swung his car back toward the city. But at the first roadhouse that
showed a blue-and-white telephone sign he left it, and into the iron box
at the end of the bar dropped a nickel. He wished to communicate with
Mr. Carroll, of Carroll and Hastings; and when he learned Mr. Carroll
had just issued orders that he must not be disturbed, the young man
gave his name.
The effect upon the barkeeper was instantaneous. With the aggrieved
air of one who feels he is the victim of a jest he laughed scornfully.
"What are you putting over?" he demanded.

The young man smiled reassuringly. He had begun to speak and,
though apparently engaged with the beer-glass he was polishing, the
barkeeper listened.
Down in Wall Street the senior member of Carroll and Hastings also
listened. He was alone in the most private of all his private offices, and
when interrupted had been engaged in what, of all undertakings, is the
most momentous. On the desk before him lay letters to his lawyer, to
the coroner, to his wife; and hidden by a mass of papers, but within
reach of his hand, an automatic pistol. The promise it offered of swift
release had made the writing of the letters simple, had given him a
feeling of complete detachment, had released him, at least in thought,
from all responsibilities. And when at his elbow the telephone coughed
discreetly, it was as though some one had called him from a world from
which already he had made his exit.
Mechanically, through mere habit, he lifted the receiver.
The voice over the telephone came in brisk staccato sentences.
"That letter I sent this morning? Forget it. Tear it up. I've been thinking
and I'm going to take a chance. I've decided to back you boys, and I
know you'll make good. I'm speaking from a roadhouse in the Bronx;
going straight from here to the bank. So you can begin to draw against
us within an hour. And--hello!--will three millions see you through?"
From Wall Street there came no answer, but