Free Sound of the Trumpet by Grace Livingston Hill Page A

lifting of the hand toward him as had been agreed upon between them, and John could only lift his brows and shrug his shoulders, showing to the officer that the man had not appeared. So the policeman blended into the distance and disappeared.
    Then one day, quite two weeks from his first appearance, the man returned to the roadside. Of course, it was not the same location where John had first seen him, but again he stood most casually as an onlooker for a few seconds, and John glanced up to see him looking straight at him, a half-amused smile on his lips as if there were a secret understanding between them. John was ready for that. He ignored the glance, swept his own eyes across the crowd, and dropped them down to his work again. He did not look that way again. Later, when the day was done and John started for home, he could not see the man anywhere, and when he passed his policeman friend who had suddenly appeared, he nodded his head as agreed upon to show that he had seen this man again.
    To an observer the policeman showed no sign that any communication had passed between them, and John made his way home. Three blocks farther on Kurt Entry fell into step beside him.
    “Well, how about it, young fella? You thought that matter over yet?”
    “Thought what matter over?” he asked indifferently.
    “That little matter of getting yourself a larger salary?”
    “Oh!
That
!” said John. “I’d almost forgotten that. You see, I never place much significance on a proposition unless I know who’s behind it. And, of course, the way you made it out, I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole, not even if the angel Gabriel was financing it. I’m an American. I’m not a traitor!”
    “Now see here, young fella,” said Entry, “you got me all wrong the other night. I wasn’t proposing anything illegal at all. You didn’t stay to hear me explain. You just went off half-cocked on that bus, and my news is too private to shout to the universe. It’s government secrets, you know. And my proposition was an all-right proposition, with reliable people behind it. People who’d never go against the government, not for worlds. As loyal people as you’d care to meet anywhere. Reliable and respected people as there is in the city.”
    “Yeah? Who, for instance?”
    Entry’s eyes narrowed. He cast a furtive glance behind him and then sidled nearer to his companion and lowered his tone. “Know anybody by the name of Vandingham?”
    John looked up with a quick wonder in his eyes, instantly concealed.
    “Seems to me I’ve heard the name,” he said, thoughtfully, almost disinterestedly. “So you mean
they
are the people offering this big salary. Is that right?”
    “Not on yer life it ain’t,” said Entry. “They are the folks who are
making
the stuff on the government job. They’d be the folks you’d be working for, see? But the big dough would come from an entirely different party, and
they’d
be the ones you’d have to satisfy. The folks that want the dope.”
    “Yeah? Well, who are they?”
    “Oh, that’s a military secret,” said Entry. “You wouldn’t likely come in contact with them at all. You’d get your check through the mail perhaps, or money order, or whatever, I don’t know which, or else sometimes in cash through a go-between.”
    “
You
, do you mean?” asked John with a quick glance at the man.
    “Oh, no, not me,” said Entry. “I never handle the money on such details. I just get my ten percent. You see, I’m pretty busy myself, sometimes traveling for my firm. But when I hear of a good thing like this, I like to help my fellow man by passing it on, and also make a little money myself on the side. I figure it’s only fair if I put you on to a lotta dough, that I should have my share for making it known to you. Ain’t that so?”
    “I suppose it’s all in the way you look at it,” said John, and continued on his steady gait, breaking into a merry whistle now and again.
    Entry stalked by