“Well, what do you say?” prompted Johnny.
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” said Jeff. “You showed marvelous penetration—marvelous! But say, Johnny, if the money hadn’t been there wouldn’t that have been awkward?”
“Oh, Billy was pretty sure Lake was the man. And we figured he hadn’t bothered to move it—you being the goat that way. What made you be a goat, Jeff? That whole performance was the most idiotic break I ever knew a grown-up man to get off. I knew you were not strictly accountable, but why didn’t you say, ‘Judge, your Honor, sir, at the time the bank was being robbed I was in a garden with a young lady, talking about the hereafter, the here and the heretofore?’”
“On the contrary, what made your Billy think it was Lake?”
Johnny told him, in detail.
“Pretty good article of plain thinking, wasn’t it?” he concluded. “Yet he mightn’t have got started on the right track at all if he hadn’t had the straight tip about your bein’ in a garden.” Johnny’s eye reverted to the apple tree. “Lake found your noseguard, you know, where you left it. I reckon maybe he saw you leave it there.—Say, Jeff! Lake’s grandfather must have been a white man. Anyhow, he’s got one decent drop of blood in him, from somewhere. For when we arrested him, he didn’t say a word about the garden. That was rather a good stunt, I think. Bully for Lake, just once!”
“Right you are! And, Mr. J. Dines, I’ve been thinking——” Jeff began.
Johnny glanced at him anxiously.
“——and I’ve about come to the conclusion that we’re some narrow contracted and bigoted on Rainbow. We don’t know it all. We ain’t the only pebble. From what I’ve seen of these Arcadia men they seem to be pretty good stuff—and like as not it’s just the same way all along the beach. There’s your Mr. White, and Griffith, and Gibson—did I tell you about Gibson?”