The Loner Read Online Free PDF

and said, “Who’s this?”
    “Name’s Vernon Moss,” the man said, “and I can answer for myself and everything.”
    “I meant no offense, Mr. Moss. I simply wanted to know if it was all right to speak frankly.”
    “Vernon’s in on the plan,” Lasswell said. “I reckon you’d say he’s my second in command. Anything you can tell me you can tell him.” Lasswell leaned forward. “Now, is it set up? Are you gonna be at Browning’s house tonight?”
    “No,” Sinclair said, aware of the bitter edge that crept into his voice. “He refused when I suggested that I come over to help him with the paperwork.”
    He had held back reports all day so that there would be a thick stack of them by late afternoon. He had done the same thing several times in the past, whenever he felt that it would be impossible to live through one more day without the sight of Rebel Browning. Since the trick had worked before, it should have worked again. Damn the luck anyway, Sinclair thought.
    Lasswell frowned. “You was supposed to be there, so you could put Browning out of the picture.”
    “I know that,” Sinclair snapped. He had played the scene over in his head time after time, figuring out how he would make some excuse to leave the room, then sneak back in behind Browning and knock him unconscious. Later, after Lasswell and his men carried off Rebel, he would have pretended that they had attacked him first, so that he had no idea what had happened while he was out cold. No one would have been able to dispute his story. But now it wouldn’t happen that way.
    Lasswell scratched at his beard. “That means we’ll have to deal with Browning.”
    “For God’s sake, you have at least a dozen men at your disposal, don’t you? Isn’t that enough to handle one man?”
    “Me and some of the boys took a look at Browning the other day. I got a hunch he’s tougher than you give him credit for, mister. When we bust in, there’s liable to be shootin’.”
    “You can’t kill him,” Sinclair said. “You know that.”
    “I know what the orders are. I also know that bullets don’t give a damn about orders when they start flyin’ around. I can’t guarantee that Browning won’t be hit.”
    “That would ruin everything.” Without waiting for Lasswell to pour, Sinclair grabbed the bottle himself and filled his glass. He drank half the whiskey and then said, “Let me think.”
    There had to be some way to salvage the plan. Everything had been carefully thought out. It couldn’t collapse just because of one minor obstacle.
    He wasn’t sure who had come up with the scheme. His only contacts with his mysterious benefactor had been through letters, letters that he had been careful to burn after committing them to memory. So he had no idea why the man wanted Rebel Browning kidnapped. It was enough to know that he, Edwin Sinclair, was going to be her savior.
    Once the ransom had been paid, he would slip into the isolated cabin where the outlaws had confined Rebel and “rescue” her before they could return to kill her, as they would make plain was their intention before leaving to collect the ransom. Then, grateful to him for saving her life, Rebel would finally see that she should be with him, not Conrad Browning. It was foolproof, Sinclair thought, even though certain elements of it did smack of a bad stage melodrama.
    An idea began to come to him. He wrestled with it for a few moments while Lasswell and Moss drank and watched him with their dull eyes. Finally, he said, “How about this? I’ll show up at Browning’s house this evening with a telegram. I can tell him that it’s an urgent wire from the San Francisco office or some such, and claim that the messenger delivered it to me rather than him by mistake. That will get me in the door, and then I can say that as long as I’m there, I might as well go ahead and give him a hand with all the paperwork he took home from the office.”
    Lasswell looked over at Moss. “What do