"We can tell the whole story."
"We cannot!" he said gloomily. "We can't tell on Jane and Annette and Catherine. We'll have to take our medicine, that's all. We needn't give our own names. That's one thing."
I was perfectly crazed with fright and exhaustion. I leaned up against a fence, and I remembered the time Lily Slater asked Ollie Haynes to see her off to Chicago, her husband being out of town; and how Ollie was carried two hundred miles before the train would stop to let him off; and how Harry never believed the story and was off shooting big game at that very minute; and Lily getting gray over her ears as a result, and not even going out to lunch with anybody for fear there were detectives watching her.
And, compared with Day, Harry Slater was an angel of mildness.
The boat was almost across by that time and Ferd was wringing the ends of his trousers. A sort of frenzy seized me. It seemed to me it would be better to be found crushed under a strange car than to be arrested for stealing champagne. I started on, rather tottery.
"I'll try it, Ferd," I said. "I think we'll be killed; but come on!"
For once luck was with us. It was a car exactly like my own! I almost cried for joy. I leaped in and pressed the starter, and the purr of the engine was joyous, absolutely. I let in the clutch and the darling slid along without a jerk. We were saved! I could drive that car. I snapped the gear lever forward into high and the six cylinders leaped to our salvation. We were off, with the white road ahead; and the puddlers were only beaching their boat. Ferd sat half turned and watched for pursuit.
"They'll search the bushes first," he said. "They'll not think of the machines for a few minutes. We can hit it up along the highway for four or five miles; then we'd better turn into a side road and put out the lights and take off the license plates. They'll telephone ahead possibly and give the license number."
We were going pretty fast by that time and just at that moment I saw a buggy ahead in the road. Ferd called to me; but it was too late—I had pressed the siren and the very hills echoed.
"Good heavens, Fan!" he said. "You've done it now!"