The Rubber Band/The Red Box 2-In-1 by Rex Stout Read Free Book Online Page B

a few days before. I went with Rubber down to Turtle-back’s shanty. We offered him Vic Lindquist’s dust for the horse, but he said it wasn’t enough. We had expected that. Then Rubber explained to him what was up, told him the whole story, and offered him an equal share with the rest of us, for the horse, and the dust to boot. Turtle-back was still half asleep. Finally, when he got the idea, he blinked at us, and then all of a sudden he slapped his knee and began to guffaw. He said that by God he always had wanted to own a part of England, and anyway he would probably lose the horse before he got a chance to ride it much. Rubber got out the PLEDGE OF THE RUBBER BAND, but Turtle-back wouldn’t have his name added to it, saying he didn’t like to have his name written down anywhere. He would trust us to see that he got his share. Rubber scribbled out a bill of sale for the horse, but Turtle-back wouldn’t sign that either; he said I was there as a witness, the horse was ours, and that
was enough. He put on his boots and took us over to Johnson’s corral, and we saddled the horse, a palamino with a white face, and led it around the long way, back of the shacks and tents and along a gully, to where the gang was
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    “We rescued George Rowley all right. You’ve heard me tell about it, how we loosened a couple of boards and then set fire to the shanty where they had him, and how he busted out of the loose place in the excitement, and how Mike Walsh, who was known to be a dead shot, emptied two guns at him without hitting him. Rowley was in the saddle and away before anyone else realized it, and nobody bothered to chase him because they were too busy putting out the fire
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    “The story came out later about our buying Turtle-back’s horse, but by that time people’s minds were on something else, and anyway our chief offense was that we had started the fire and it couldn’t be proved we had done that. It might have been different if the man we helped to escape had done something really criminal, like cheating at cards or stealing somebody’s dust
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    “So far as I know, none of us ever saw Rowley or heard of him since that night. You’ve heard me mention twenty times, when you and I were having hard going, that I’d like to find him and learn if he owed me anything, but you know I never did and of course I meant it more or less as a joke anyhow. But recently, here in France, two things have come up about it. The first one is a thought that’s in my mind all the time, what if I do get mine over here, what kind of a fix am I leaving you and the kid in? My little daughter Clara—God how I’d love to see her. And you. To hell with that stuff when it’s no use, but I’d gladly stand up and let the damn Germans shoot me tomorrow morning if I could see you two right this minute. The answer to my question is, a hell of a fix. My life would end more useless than it started, leaving my wife and daughter without a single solitary damn thing
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    “The other thing that’s come up is that I’ve seen George Rowley. It was one day last week. I may have told you that the lobe of his right ear was gone—he said he had it hacked off in Australia—but I don’t think I really knew him by that. There probably is a mighty good print of his mug in my mind somewhere, and I just simply knew it was him. After twenty-three years! I was out with a survey detail about a mile back of the front trenches, laying out new communication lines, and a big car came along. British. The car stopped. It had four British officers in it, and one of them called to me and I went over and he asked for directions to our division headquarters
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I gave them to him, and he looked at my insignia and asked if we Americans let our captains dig ditches. I had seen by his insignia that he was a brigade commander. I grinned at him and said that in our army everybody worked but the privates. He looked at me closer and said, ‘By Gad, it’s Gil Fox!’ I said,