“Exactly! You are such a fussy old lady and so full of curiosity, Auntie.”
“Are you going to let the trunks go off?” asked Auntie anxiously.
“We may have to. Then the persons who apply for them at the other end will be nabbed. Of course, Markle will buy tickets and check the trunks and mail the checks to his confederates. More than likely, he will not get on the train himself but just pretend he is going to. I fancy poor old Markle will wish he had taken the train to-night. He may be near the end of his rope. I can’t help feeling kind of sorry for the poor devil.” Josie sighed a little. “Father always felt sorry for the criminals. One can’t help it. He used to say they had just as much feeling as we had and because they had gone wrong did not alter the fact that they had been cunning little babies once and their mothers had no doubt loved them. Perhaps they loved them so much they did not spank them enough and that is the reason they turned out so badly.”
Bob laughed in a voice not at all suitable for a respectable auntie and was admonished by her critical nephew. They soon caught up with the truck and kept a few hundred feet behind them.
“What is that coming up behind us?” Markle asked his companion.
“Nothing but one of those Indians with a side car carrying an old woman and a little boy. I tell you we made a safe getaway and these trunks will be on the Eastern express bound for the metropolis before the wedding guests have sat down to their paté de fois gras.”
It went off quite as Josie had planned. Markle, quietly and in a businesslike manner, bought two tickets to New York as soon as he reached the bustling little station at Somerville, after lifting out the heavy trunks. Josie and her fictitious auntie were near him and heard him ask for the tickets and demand checks for his baggage.
“I’ll get your tickets, Auntie, while you go ’round to the baggage room and see if your trunk has come,” suggested Josie in an audible tone and a manner of a small nephew who was more or less wearied by his female relatives. “But maybe I’d better not buy your ticket until you see whether it is there or not, ’cause I know you won’t get on the train without it. You women won’t go on trips without your duds.”
Bob flounced off with all the dignity he could muster, managing his bombazine with surprising grace. Markle and his companion paid no attention whatsoever to the boy and the old woman, but went on to the baggage room, where they personally superintended putting the checks on their trunks. It took but a moment for Auntie to poke around the piled up trunks in her diligent search for her own dream luggage and take the numbers of the checks.
“Can’t you find it?” asked Josie. “They promised to get it here in time. I don’t see why you don’t go on without it.” But Auntie decided she would wait until the next train. Her decision was made in a husky whine that astonished Josie, for it sounded so exactly like that of a peevish old woman.