“Please, Mr. Bybee!” Sally ran to the showman and seized both his hands in hers. “Please don’t set the police on David! I know he’s innocent! There’s some reason why he isn’t here—a good reason! But he didn’t have anything to do with the robbery. I know that! But if you tell the police he’s been with the carnival they’ll find him somehow and put him in jail on those other charges—and me, too! It doesn’t matter about me, but I couldn’t live if David was put in jail on my account! Oh, please! You’ve been so good to us!” And she went suddenly on her knees to him, her face upraised in an agony of appeal.
Pop Bybee looked down upon Sally’s agonized face with troubled indecision in his bright blue eyes. He tried to lift her to her feet, but her arms were locked about his knees. The midget had scrambled from Sally’s shoulder to the floor of the car and as Bybee hesitated, her tiny fists beat upon his right leg for attention.
“You’re not going to break your promise to Sally, are you, Mr. Bybee?” the tiny voice piped shrilly. “You told her and the boy you’d protect them. She’s told you the truth. Don’t you know truth when you hear it? I always knew Nita was a crook. She never saw a policeman or a constable or a sheriff without turning white as a ghost. She joined up with the carnival just to learn the lay of the land and tip off her accomplice—this Steve person—where to find the money. That’s why she was spying on Mrs. Bybee that day in Stanton. Listen to me!”
“I’m listening, Miss Tanner,” Pop Bybee acknowledged wearily. “And I swear I don’t know what to say or do. If they get clear away with that money the show’ll be stranded. Every cent I had in the world was in that safe. Reckon I was a fool to carry it with me, but I never trusted a bank, and it was more convenient, having it right with me. Tomorrow’s payday, too, and all of you are in the same boat with me.”
“Listen, boss, let’s take a vote on it.” Gus, the barker, spoke up suddenly and loudly. “Now me—I believe the kid here is telling the truth. No college boy could crack a safe like that. It was a professional job, or I’m a liar! Of course Nita may have tolled the boy off with her and this Steve, since she was so crazy about him, but we ain’t got no proof she did, and as Sally says, if you sick the cops on the boy, the jig will be up with her as well as the boy. Another thing, Dave may be laying in the bushes somewhere with a bullet—”
“Oh!” Sally screamed, as the full significance of Gus’ words burst upon her. She fainted then, her little body slumping into a heap at Bybee’s feet, her head striking one of his big shoes and resting there.
When she regained consciousness she was lying in the lower berth which had belonged to Nita, and the midget was kneeling on the pillow beside her head, dabbing her face with a handkerchief soaked in aromatic spirits of ammonia. Mazie and Sue, two of the dancers in the “girlie” show, sat on the edge of the berth, their cold-creamed faces almost beautiful with anxiety and sympathy.
“What’s the matter? Is it time to get up?” Sally asked dazedly. “What are you doing, Betty?”
The midget answered in her tiny, brisk voice: “I’m bathing your face with ammonia which Mrs. Bybee sent. It should be cologne, and this ammonia will probably dry your skin something dreadful, but it was the only thing we could get. You fainted, you know.”
“Oh, I remember!” Sally moaned, her head beginning to thresh from side to side on the pillow. “Have they found David? I know he’s been hurt!”