“Why, say, he isn’t right in the head, is he?” demanded Neale O’Neil, wonderingly. “Making out to be a constable, and robbing people, and all that?”
“He’s one of these half-baked critters you find once in so often that take correspondence school courses to learn to be detectives, and all that sort of mush. Ugh!”
“Abe” was a very forlorn looking creature as he came out to the road. Sammy on the fence waved his cap again and cheered.
“I tell you, Neale, you’re some runner,” declared the boy, enthusiastically. “What are you going to do—hang him?”
“That horrid child!” exclaimed Agnes. “I never heard of such a bloodthirsty boy before.”
But the rest of the party were inclined to feel that the punishment to be meted out to the fellow who had posed as constable could not be too harsh.
Sheriff Keech ordered Abe to get into his car, and seemed to have no fear that the mean-spirited fellow might try to run away again.
“I know Abe,” he said to Mrs. Heard, when she suggested this possibility. “He hasn’t any more character than a dishrag. He’s arrested now, and he knows it. He wouldn’t dare run away from me once I’ve put my hand on him.
“Now, ma’am, tell me all about it.”
Mrs. Heard had plenty of help in relating the circumstances surrounding the touring party’s two adventures with this Abe. Everybody wanted to tell what he or she thought of the fellow, even to Dot. The latter said, with conviction: