XVII
Caught!
Back at the house we heard the whole story. The man Jo had gone back to work but Michael still lingered. Hamish had taken a long drink of Craven House well water in bold defiance of Hattie May’s warning that it was practically sure to be full of deadly germs; his attitude being, I think, that after what he’d been through a germ more or less was of trifling moment. He was seated on an old wooden bench at the back door. Hattie May had wiped some of the mud from his face but it still had a grayish unhealthy cast.
“How in the world did you happen to go way out there?” It was Michael who got the story going.
“It was on account of those cops,” Hamish said. “I was tryin’ to get to the place where I’d parked my car ’thout runnin’ into ’em. You see after they got you——”
“Were you in the house too?” Michael interrupted.
Hamish shook his head. “No, I was outside but I heard most everything that went on. I got here ’bout ten o’clock last night. You see I had kind of a hunch that that Bangs fellow wasn’t through with the place, after me runnin’ into him in Millport selling that hair tonic. I said to myself, ‘He’s still on the trail of sumpin or I miss my guess.’”
“Yeah.” Michael nodded understandingly. “Go on.”
“Well I parked my car up the road in that little lane that runs through somebody’s orchard. Then I came back here to the house. I hid out in the bushes there to sort of reconnoiter and I hadn’t been there more’n a few minutes when sure enough along comes a car. It stopped down the road a bit and after a while I spied a man comin’ through the bushes, making for the back door. I recognized him even though it was dark—it was Bangs.”
“Oh, Hamish, weren’t you scared to death?” cried Hattie May.