“Scared of what?” inquired her brother. “There was I lyin’ low behind a bush—he hadn’t seen me.”
“Oh, go on,” I urged, “what happened then?”
“Well he unlocks the door, goes inside and locks it after him. ‘All right, mister,’ I says to myself, ‘that’s all I wanted to know. Now I’ll just buzz over to Millport and get a cop and you can do some explaining!’”
Michael grinned wryly. “But you didn’t have to!” he put in.
“Gosh no! I hadn’t any more than got to the front wall creepin’ along so’s not to make a sound when, boy, ’long comes another car. I guess you know who that was,” he looked at Michael. “It stopped down the road about where the first one had, near as I could judge. Bye and bye I heard voices. I picked me a bush close by the house and lay down again. The voices got nearer. One of the fellows had a flash and I saw they were cops, two of ’em.”
“Oh, Hamish, what did you do then?”
“Do? I just lay low and listened. I could hear every word they said. One of ’em went to the back door and one to the front. Pretty soon I heard the back door crash in—that was the husky one did that,” again he looked at Michael and again, surprisingly, Michael nodded confirmation.
“Well so they got in and I could hear them walkin’ round through the house. Say, get me another drink.”
Michael brought the water. “Oh, do go on,” Hattie May said impatiently. “What did the villain do when they got him?”
Hamish finished the glass of water before he replied. “They didn’t get him at all,” he said dramatically. “They got Michael instead! Can you imagine that?”