CHAPTER VIII
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Cora was pale and frightened. Jack and Ed had already reached the office of the country squire, where that official had taken the sulky prisoner. Walter went back to the cottage to assure the young girls there that everything would ultimately be all right.
From under dark, shaggy eyebrows the man stared at Cora. He seemed to know of the gypsy woman's threat, and was adding to it all the savagery that looks and scowls could impart. But Cora was not to be thus intimidated—to give in to such lawbreakers.
"Do you recognize the prisoner?" asked the officer.
"As well as I can tell from the opportunity I had of seeing him," replied the girl, in a steadied voice.
"What about him do you remember?"
"The beard, and the fact that he is lame. I must have hit him when I fired to give the alarm."
The man looked up and smiled. "Humph!" he grunted, "fired—to give—the alarm!"
"Pretty good firing, eh?" demanded the squire. "Now, Miss Kimball, please give us the whole story."
Again the man cast that swift, fierce look at Cora, but her eyes were diverted from him.
"The first time I saw him—I think it was he—was one evening when we were returning from a motor ride. I saw a man creeping around the cottage. He had that peculiar stoop of the shoulders."
"He's got that, all right," agreed the squire.
"The next time I saw the person, whom I take to be this man, was last night, about midnight. I was aroused from sleep, and upon making a light in the hall I saw a man under the window. The next moment he jumped out, and again I saw the figure under the window."
Cora paused. Somehow she felt unreasonably nervous, but the strain of the night's excitement might account for that.
"What have you got to say for yourself, Tony?" asked the squire.
"Not guilty," growled the man. "I was at the camp last night, and when the old folks were packing up I got kicked with that big bay horse. Ouch!" and he rubbed the injured leg.
"Looks funny, though, doesn't it, Tony?"
Jack and Ed were talking to Cora. "If you have finished with us, Squire Redding, we will leave," said Ed. "My sister is not used to this sort of thing."
"Certainly, certainly," agreed the squire politely. "I am much obliged for her testimony. I guess we will hold Tony for the grand jury. Gypsies in this county have to be careful, or they lose their rights to come in here. I think, myself, we would be better off without them."
"Then give me a chance to leave," snapped the man. "The rest are gone.
We are done with this blamed county, anyhow."
"Well, you will have to settle up first," declared Squire Redding.
"Those spoons were valuable."
"I ain't got no spoons! I tell you I was at the camp all night, and I don't know nothin' about this thing."
"Very well, very well. Can you furnish a thousand-dollar bond?"
"Thousand-dollar bond!" and the gypsy shifted uneasily. "I guess not, judge."
"Then here comes the man to attend to your case. Constable Cummings, take this man to the station again and lock him up. Here, Tony, you can walk all right. Don't play off that way."
But Tony did not move. He sat there defiant.
Officer Cummings was a big man and accustomed to handling prisoners as rough and as ugly as this one. The two steel cells back of the fire house were often occupied by rough fishermen and clammers who forgot the law at the seaside place, and it was always Tom Cummings who put them in "the pen."
"Come, Tony," he said, with a flourish of his stick. "I never like to hit a gypsy; it's bad luck."
The prisoner looked up at big Tom. Then he shuffled to his feet and shambled out of the room.
As he passed down the stone steps he brushed past Cora. Whether intentionally or otherwise, the man shoved the girl so that she was obliged to jump down at the side of the step. Jack saw it and so did Ed, but big Tom winked at them and merely hurried the prisoner along. Cora only smiled. Why should the man not be rude when her evidence had accused him of a serious crime—that of breaking and entering?
"I didn't tell you about the bottle," she said to the boys as they walked along. "I found this bottle in the fields."
"Chloroform!" exclaimed Jack. "You should have told the judge, Cora."
"But could I prove that the man had it? Besides, it would be awful to have that made public."
"You are right, Cora," agreed Ed. "First thing we'd know, it would be in the New York papers. 'Attempt to Chloroform Three Young Girls!' That would not be pleasant news for the folks up home way."
"Oh, well, I suppose you are right," said Jack. "But that bottle puts a different light on the case, and it seems to me the fellow ought to suffer for it."
"And do you know that old gypsy woman, Liza, met me and tried to scare me into—or out of—identifying Tony? She made a most dramatic threat."
"Did, eh? I thought all the gypsies had cleared out!" exclaimed Jack.
"I'll go and get a warrant for her——"
"She took the eleven o'clock train," said Cora. "I saw her going to the station as I came up the street. Oh, I wouldn't bother with the poor old woman. This man is her brother, and naturally she wants to keep him out of trouble."
"At the expense of trouble for others." Jack was determined to have justice for his sister. "I'm going to make sure she and the whole tribe have left the county. The lazy loafers!"
"Now, Jacky," and Ed smiled indulgently. "Didn't Liza tell your fortune once, and say that you were going to marry the proverbial butter tub? It is not nice of you to go back on a thing like that."
"Did it strike you, boys, that this man answers the description of the man Mrs. Robbins was frightened by?" asked Cora.
"That's so," agreed Ed. "I'll bet he had his eye on something around the bungalow—not Miss Robbins, of course."
"Well, it seems better that he is now safe," said Cora, with a sigh.
"I'm glad I am through with it."
"I hope you are," said Ed, and something in his manner caused Cora to remember that remark. "I hope you are!"
But Cora was not through with it by a great deal—as we shall soon see.