He turned and looked at me intently.
“Do you know,” he observed, “my admiration for you is posatively beyond words!”
“Then don’t talk,” I said, feeling still anguished by Tom’s conduct and not caring much just then about the reward or any such mundane matters.
“But I must talk,” he replied. “I have a little plan, which I darsay you have guest. As a matter of fact, I have reasons to think it will fall in with—er—plans of your own.”
Ye gods! Was I thus being asked to compound a felony? Or did he not think I belonged to my own Familey, but to some other of the same name, and was therfore not suspicous.
“Here’s what I want,” he went on in a smooth manner. “And there’s Twenty-five dollars in it for you. I want this little car of yours tonight.”
Here I almost ran into a cow, but was luckaly saved, as a Jersey cow costs seventy-five dollars and even more, depending on how much milk given daily. When back on the road again, having but bent a mud guard against a fense, I was calmer.
“How do I know you will bring it back?” I asked, stareing at him fixedly.
“Oh, now see here,” he said, straightening his necktie, “I may be a Theif, but I am not that kind of a Theif. I play for big stakes or nothing.”
I then remembered that there was a large dinner that night and that mother would have her jewelery out from the safe deposit, and father’s pearl studs et cetera. I turned pale, but he did not notice it, being busy counting out Twenty-five dollars in small bills.