"Guess—guess—we'd better not stop to talk about it then," said Freddy Perth, brokenly, but with a sadly forced grin.
"Tell ye what, slip 'round here with me. Drive up slow. I'll get ye into my barn an' a little later ye can slip out o' town," Mr. Gouger suggested. There was a gleam in his eye, however, and a sort of internal chuckle in his tones that would have been a warning had any of the Trio noticed them.
"Well, blame it all! Show us where," growled Pickton, noticeably bolder now. "Lead on!"—This with solemn, dramatic air that would have been ridiculous had it not been so tragic.
Mr. Gouger wasted time in very few more words. Through an alley he escorted the Trio, still in the car, to the yard at the rear of his own modest, frame dwelling in a side street close by. Asking the lads to leave their car partially screened from view beneath the low-branching cherry trees, he invited them into a small, tightly-boarded cowstable.
"Stay in here a spell. I'll be back," grinned the would-be detective, and suddenly stepping out he closed the door and locked it by means of a large padlock attached to a chain. "Ye can consider yourselves under arrest right now," sang out Mr. Gouger, then, in tones of triumph, "I'll have the constable here right off an' ye can go before the 'squire an' pay up. Don't be speedin' next time till ye know there's no detectives around."
The astonishment of Messrs. Gaines, Pickton and Perth may be more easily imagined than successfully described. They did not suspect the purpose and the reason for the imposition that had been practiced upon them, nor did they realize that their captor had no authority to make an arrest himself. He had taken this means of detaining them until he could summon a constable, apparently, because he did not care to undertake the arrest alone. Having no knowledge of Mr. Gouger's lack of admiration for Marshal Wellock, of course, the lads ascribed the motives of that very able disciple of Mr. Pinkerton entirely to a desire to share in the fine to be imposed upon them.
These general conclusions the three boys reached in an extremely short space of time. What should they do? The day was warm and the tightly-closed stable was like an oven. In the cherry trees and along the hedge, bordered by bachelor buttons, at the opposite side of Mr. Gouger's back yard, the robins were twittering joyously. But their lively notes awakened no responsive feeling in the hearts of the imprisoned Trio.
Remotely possible is it, however, that, unnoticed though their music was, the songsters exerted an influence upon the thoughts of Soapy Gaines; or it may have been only a coincidence. At any rate, his spoken words were—
"I'll be blamed, Pick, if you ain't a bird! Followed that duffer into this trap like a pup trailing a meat wagon. Blame me, if you ain't a real bird!"
Mr. Gaines' tones, it may be stated, were even less complimentary than his language.