“What sort of car did those fellows have?”
“Oh, it was a small car. A runabout—Maybrouke make. Good car, but not like this.”
“Mr. Collinger’s runabout,” whispered Agnes. “That was his make.”
“When were these fellows here?” asked Neale. Then he explained: “We’re very much interested. One of our friends lost a car like the one you describe. Can you remember just when it was?”
“Oh, yes, young sir. It is fixed in my memory,” and the Gypsy mentioned a date immediately following the day on which the car of the county surveyor had been taken away from the Milton court house.
“It was those men!” cried Agnes decidedly.
King David looked at her curiously. “They tried to sell the car to me,” he said. “I was not sure they came by it honestly. So many people try to foist stolen goods on us because we are Gypsies.”
This was a new light on that subject; yet Neale O’Neil thought it might be quite true. “Give a dog a bad name and hang him” is not only a trite saying, but a true one.
“What did the fellows look like?” he asked the chief, and quickly described in particular the fellow they knew as Saleratus Joe.
“No mistaking him, young sir,” said the chief Gypsy. “He was one. The other was an older man.”