Blake’s dull face flushed under this gibe, but before he could set
his retort in order Tom had turned to Wilson, and was saying,
with placid indifference of manner and voice:
“Who got the reward, Pudd’nhead?”
Wilson winced slightly, and saw that his own turn was come.
“What reward?”
“Why, the reward for the thief, and the other one for the knife.”
Wilson answered–and rather uncomfortably, to judge by his
hesitating fashion of delivering himself:
“Well, the–well, in face, nobody has claimed it yet.”
Tom seemed surprised.
“Why, is that so?”
Wilson showed a trifle of irritation when he replied:
“Yes, it’s so. And what of it?”
“Oh, nothing. Only I thought you had struck out a new idea,
and invented a scheme that was going to revolutionize the timeworn
and ineffectual methods of the–” He stopped, and turned to Blake,
who was happy now that another had taken his place on the gridiron.
“Blake, didn’t you understand him to intimate that it wouldn’t be
necessary for you to hunt the old woman down?”
‘B’George, he said he’d have thief and swag both inside of three days–
he did, by hokey! and that’s just about a week ago.
Why, I said at the time that no thief and no thief’s pal was
going to try to pawn or sell a thing where he knowed the pawnbroker
could get both rewards by taking HIM into camp _with_ the swag.
It was the blessedest idea that ever I struck!”
“You’d change your mind,” said Wilson, with irritated bluntness,
“if you knew the entire scheme instead of only part of it.”
“Well,” said the constable, pensively, “I had the idea that
it wouldn’t work, and up to now I’m right anyway.”
“Very well, then, let it stand at that, and give it a further show.
It has worked at least as well as your own methods, you perceive.”
The constable hadn’t anything handy to hit back with,
so he discharged a discontented sniff, and said nothing.
After the night that Wilson had partly revealed his scheme
at his house, Tom had tried for several days to guess out the
secret of the rest of it, but had failed. Then it occurred to
him to give Roxana’s smarter head a chance at it. He made up a
supposititious0z H case, and laid it before her. She thought it over,
and delivered her verdict upon it. Tom said to himself,
“She’s hit it, sure!” He thought he would test that verdict now,
and watch Wilson’s face; so he said reflectively:
“Wilson, you’re not a fool–a fact of recent discovery.
Whatever your scheme was, it had sense in it, Blake’s opinion to
the contrary notwithstanding. I don’t ask you to reveal it,
but I will suppose a case–a case which you will answer as a starting
point for the real thing I am going to come at, and that’s all I want.
You offered five hundred dollars for the knife, and five hundred
for the thief. We will suppose, for argument’s sake,
that the first reward is _advertised_ and the second offered by
_private letter_ to pawnbrokers and–”
Blake slapped his thigh, and cried out:
“By Jackson, he’s got you, Pudd’nhead! Now why couldn’t I
or _any_ fool have thought of that?”
Wilson said to himself, “Anybody with a reasonably good head would
have thought of it. I am not surprised that Blake didn’t detect it;
I am only surprised that Tom did. There is more to him
than I supposed.” He said nothing aloud, and Tom went on:
“Very well. The thief would not suspect that there was a trap,
and he would bring or send the knife, and say he bought it for a song,
or found it in the road, or something like that, and try
to collect the reward, and be arrested–wouldn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Wilson.
“I think so,” said Tom. “There can’t be any doubt of it.
Have you ever seen that knife?”
“No.”
“Has any friend of yours?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well, I begin to think I understand why your scheme failed.”
“What do you mean, Tom? What are you driving at?” asked Wilson,
with a dawning sense of discomfort.