Lost Lake House by Elisabeth Grace Foley

watching him with quirked
eyebrows, waiting for his answer. This was his chance, he
realized—if Maurice Vernon got the idea that he was scared, or
having a twinge of conscience, he might just decide he didn’t want
Marshall around here any more. Bill Harolday was still standing
there too, wearing his usual grim expression…it wouldn’t take much
to make him suspicious. If Marshall was fired, it would at least
cut the Gordian knot of guilt and indecision he had tied for
himself, and he might not regret it too much afterwards.
    Maurice Vernon sounded both impatient and
amused. “What’s the matter, Marsh? Something bothering you?”
    Marshall tried to smile. He glanced at the
monogrammed key and back at his employer. “No,” he said. “It’s—it’s
a big job, that’s all.”
    Vernon laughed and clapped him on the
shoulder. “You’ll manage. Okay, get on to work now. And remember,
every night this week.”
    Marshall left him and trudged up the hill
toward the tool sheds, a short distance above the boathouse. He
glanced up to his left, where the figures of two other men were
cresting the hill along the footpath that led to the camouflaged
access to the underground furnaces. Vernon was right—their
preparations were foolproof. Marshall had seen a police raid once
before, one of the nights he had been there. The police had found
nothing, though it was obvious they suspected the Lost Lake House
of housing something against Prohibition law.
Foolproof—except for the one thing Maurice Vernon never mentioned:
that a word from one man who knew the location of the secret
entrances and exits could put the police in possession of the whole
scheme at a stroke. He never said it because he had full confidence
in his ability to choose trustworthy men and see that they stayed
that way.
    But wasn’t he a little over-confident? That
confidence, almost a swagger, was one of Vernon’s defining
characteristics. He obviously believed everything he said. But
there were some things Maurice Vernon didn’t know, Marshall
thought, as he took a ring of keys out of his pocket and inserted
one in the lock of the tool shed. He didn’t know how relentlessly
Marshall hated his own part in the bootlegging operation. Marshall
was past the idea of thinking that Vernon knew and played upon his
sense of obligation—Vernon simply regarded him as another good
guess and good investment.
    Maybe his assurance that the police would
never get anything on them was a little precarious too?
    That’s only wishful thinking ,
Marshall told himself. He twisted the boathouse key onto the ring
alongside the others, and held them tightly for a minute so the
metal bit into his fingers. Wishful thinking . Wishing
someone else would blast the Lake House apart so he would be
absolved from the responsibility. For as long as he worked here he
felt that responsibility as heavily as if he were to blame for the
whole thing. But not enough to make him pull free—not enough to
keep him from being dragged further down into the bootlegging
racket every time he accepted another assignment like today’s.
    He collected a pair of garden rakes and
flung them down in a wheelbarrow so the tines rattled. Maybe it was
Maurice Vernon’s gin his father got somewhere those nights that
Marshall came home and found him sunk in sluggish sleep on the
couch in the front room. It didn’t matter that his father would
manage to get the stuff somewhere else, Prohibition or no
Prohibition, if Vernon’s operation were shut down tomorrow—so long
as he, Marshall, had a hand in running it, he felt as responsible
as if he had brought home the bottle and put it into his father’s
hand. You could only be answerable for your own conscience.
    Outside, the morning routine of the House
was going forward. Sweeping up the rooms and preparing refreshments
ahead of time indoors, raking and trimming and maintenance of the
paths and electric lights outside; and down below, the distilleries
set in