The police were still active. So insistent was Boroday on caution that all of September went by without so much as a plan of campaign. Talbot played golf and established friendly relations that might be invaluable later. Huff, under protest, retained the taxicab work.
"It's a dog's life," he said. "They're not after me now. Give me something else to do, or else let me take a vocation."
But they kept him at work.
Huff fell into the way of seeing Elinor once or twice a week. Talbot took him out, picking him up on the edge of town after dusk, on his way in his car to a dance or dinner at the country club, and taking him back the same way.
And the hoy's infatuation for Elinor grew and thrived on those late summer meetings. Her sweetness and elusiveness maddened him. Sometimes he thought her never so far from him as when she was in his arms.
"Do you love me?" he would demand hoarsely.
"I think so. I know I want you to love me."
And he had to be content with this.
On the evenings when she was alone Elinor sat in her arbor and watched the road up the hill. Ward had called twice, and each time she had been out on the long rambles she took almost daily. After his second visit, she stayed in the house for days, expecting him. But he did not come again.
She was not in love with Ward, just as she was not in love with Walter Huff. But the clergyman represented, in her strange and lonely life, something new and different. He typified all that she had never known. He was the priest, rather than the man to her at first. The time was coming when he would be man only, and after that—
Late in September Boroday was arrested. The arrest came as a shock to the band. As a matter of fact the police could prove nothing, but the chief had a long talk with the Russian. It was the Agrarian affair, of course. The chief bud recognized him. But so firmly had old Hilary's respectability been rooted in the public mind that the chief connected Boroday only casually with him.
"You know that I cannot prove this thing on you," he said, "but you know also perfectly well that I can fix you to the tune of about ten years."
"Perfectly correct in both instances," said Boroday. "You cannot prove anything and you can send me up. What is it you want?"
"I want the members of that band of yours," said the chief. "And I want your headquarters. You people have been playing hell in this county long enough; the newspapers are laughing at us. Sooner or litter, we'll get you and get you all. Make it sooner and we'll let you off easy."
"How much time will you give me?"
The chief offered twenty-four hours and Boroday took it. At the end of that time he reported.
"I guess I'll take what's coming to me," he said. "You can fix it any way you like."
It was a bitter disappointment to the police.
Boroday had used his day's freedom to warn the band and to make plans for regaining his freedom. Of money he had none. What he had made under old Hilary's leadership had gone back to Russia, dollar for dollar. He had financed part of the Kiev defense of the Jews, had saved Prince Ovarsky from Siberia. There were other things.
Money would save Boroday. And there was practically no money.
By unanimous consent they kept the news of his arrest from Elinor.
It was Talbot who planned the country club coup. The Russian was in jail then, on a trumped-up charge. Old Hilary dead and Boroday in jail—there was no one to advise caution.
"Boroday ill!" Elinor exclaimed. They were accounting for his absence from her Saturday-night dinner. "Why, then he should be here, where he can be cared for."
"We told him that." Lethbridge was always readiest with his tongue. "But he's not sick enough to need much, and he's deucedly disagreeable when he's laid up."
Elinor was a little hurt.
In the arbor, ofter dinner, they planned the robbery. Where old Hilary would have taken a month to think and plan, they took minutes. There was a ball at the club that night, the last of the waning country-club season. The entrance to the grounds was a mile from the clubhouse—two iron gates standing open between pillars, and dense shrubbery all about. Talbot would wreck his car there, driving into one of the gates. That would require each departing car to slow down, probably to atop.
The arrangement was that Talbot walk up to the club, and establish an alibi and his innocence by telephoning to a city garage for help. Tho rest was left to Huff and Lethbridge. A quarter of a mile away across the golf links, they would have a car in which to make their getaway.
Lethbridge was only lukewarm.