Mr. Foster told it.
The Colonel listened with increasing astonishment. Either this man was the most plausible scoundrel unhanged, or else he was the biggest fool unstrangled. As the story proceeded, the Colonel inclined to the latter explanation. The idiot’s words rang true; he did not sound as if he were inventing his tale, the details were convincing. Good Gad!
“Well, we’ll soon see if you’re speaking the truth,” he said, when Mr. Foster’s bleating accents had come to an end almost at his own front door. “Take us to this tool-shed of yours and let’s have a look at this girl.”
“But—but haven’t you arrested her?” stammered Mr. Foster.
“Never you mind what I’ve done or what I haven’t,” replied the Colonel gruffly.
In a state of mental chaos Mr. Foster led them to the tool-shed, produced the key and automatically unlocked the door. No girl was there. A strip of twilit sky visible through the roof, however, showed where a girl, a very slim girl, might possibly have been. Around them stood camp bedding, a muddy nightgown, pieces of bread and a burnt sausage, mute witnesses to Mr. Foster’s veracity.
“She’s gone,” said Mr. Foster, inspired.
Against his will the Colonel was almost convinced. There and then, among the camp bedding, the muddy nightgown and the burnt sausage, he questioned Mr. Foster at considerable length, and the answers he obtained completed his conversion. He had been wrong: the man was only a consummate ass. Then in that case…. The Colonel’s eye grew grim and his brow darkened. In that case….
“Describe this girl as closely as you can,” he ordered.
It is surprising how misleading a perfectly accurate description may be. Dora Howard and Cynthia Nesbitt were not in the slightest degree alike. Mr. Foster gave a very fair working description of Dora; the Colonel received a perfect impression of Cynthia.