[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Amid all this, Nathan Conners and Howard Lake were now making their way along a wooded hillside west of Harrystown because of an acquaintance doing the same thing. The acquaintance in question was Phillipe LeMoine, or at least that was the name by which he was known to the Seven Aces. Whether that was actually what his mother had named him was open to question.

Among the known agents mysteriously present in remote Harrystown were several men known to be employed by, or at least associated with, the French spy services. One of those men was Phillipe LeMoine, and the Seven Aces had encountered him in the course of their own activities on more than one occasion. Sometimes they had worked with him, sometimes against him, depending on what their mission might be and what his business might involve.

When the Seven Aces had realized the LeMoine was in Harrystown, Nathan had assigned men to ‘tail’ him, and they had discovered that he had been visiting local cemeteries, for no obvious reason. Which brought Nathan and Lake out to this area in the early morning hours. They already knew that LeMoine had come out this way that morning, they were hoping to get ahead of him by cutting through the woods to the cemetery they suspected him to be making toward. Nathan had some more men following LeMoine, but he hoped to get into position to observe him before they took any precipitate action.

At just about that same time, as Nathan and Lake were taking their short cut through the scrub woods, someone else was checking into a local hotel. He was fairly non-descript, other than perhaps for a shock of red hair, touched with a hint of gray here and there. He was about six feet in height, and heavily built for his height without seeming to be particularly overweight. Only someone experienced in reading people would likely recognize the slight signs that showed him to be carrying a concealed pistol.

“Good morning, Mr. Shaw,” the clerk for the Bradford
Arms Hotel said, with practiced courtesy.

“Good morning,” the redhead said. “I have reservations
for myself and my wife.”

“Of course, sir,” the clerk replied. A few minutes sufficed
for the redhead to sign himself into the registry as ‘John
Shaw’, and for the bellhop to carry his single suitcase up
to Room Number 34, on the northeast corner of the third
floor of the five-story hotel. This was not the room he had
reserved, a small problem had let to a last-minute change.

A few minutes later, Shaw was joined by a blond woman
who would have introduced herself as “Mrs. Susan Shaw’.

In actual fact, of course, neither of these two were named
what they claimed to me, nor were they married.

“Is the room secure?” ‘Susan’ asked.

“As much as it can be,” replied her ‘husband’. “I haven’t
had time to do a really thorough job of checking it, but we
\used the old ‘reservation trick’ to get a room we weren’t
originally supposed to be in. I think we’re probably all right.”

"I'll call us all right when we get the item and get out of
town," the blonde said. "Which isn't going to be easy, this
town is turning into a madhouse. I was listening to some
girls talking in the café across the street, apparently some
freak has been digging up graves!"

"Just what we needed," the redhead sighed. "Let's just
see if we can get our job done and get out as soon as we
can. Assuming the grave robber isn't connected to our
business, that is. This has gotten strange enough that I
wouldn't rule anything out."


While 'Mr. and Mrs. Shaw' were having their discussion in the hotel room, across the small city another conversation was taking place, aboard a small boat that was coming up the river.

MORE LATER.