“Oh, you aren’t a prig,” said Bob. “You’re a lu-lu.”
“I don’t know whether you mean to be complimentary or not,” returned the hammer-thrower with unvarying seriousness. “As I believe I have remarked before, you appear totally not to comprehend your own position. I might have awakened the house and what would have been your status then? There have of late been so many mysterious burglaries at large country-houses and in the big city homes of the affluent that a guest, found rambling about in pajamas at unseemly hours, courts, to put it mildly, suspicion. Anyhow, for my own protection, I had to speak to Miss Gerald. You see that, don’t you? We’ll waive the moral side.”
“‘Your own protection’ is good,” said Bob, sending his ball twice around the table and complacently observing the result.
“I mean that if it became known that I had secreted you in my room and said nothing about it, it would, in a measure, place me in the light of being an accomplice,” returned the hammer-thrower, ignoring the point in Bob’s last words. “I don’t know whether anything will be discovered missing here or not, but if there should be—?”
“Things will be discovered missing, all right,” returned Bob. “What was that you dropped out of the window in my room last night?”
The hammer-thrower stared at him. “I?—your room?” he said at length very slowly, with the most genuine amazement written all over his serious reliable features.
“You! My room!” repeated Bob. “You didn’t expect me to come back. I gave you quite a surprise, didn’t I? You are certainly some sprinter.”
Still the hammer-thrower continued to stare. “Mad!” he said at last. “I hardly credited it before, but now—That private sanatorium!—No doubt, it was best.”
Bob laughed. “That sanatorium fits in fine, doesn’t it? You’ll be trying the little abduction act next, yourself, I suppose.”
“I’m trying to make up my mind whether you aren’t really a dangerous person to be at large,” said the hammer-man heavily. “You might say something like that to some one else. You appear absolutely irresponsible.”