“April fool your own self,” said the one called Murphy. “I’ve been following you for two hours and I don’t trust you. You’re too resourceful. Is the stuff there?” he asked the first man, who had been searching in the wagon.
“All here.”
“Then we’ll be moving along,” he said; and in this fashion did we reach the town once more, and the station house.
Never shall I forget that moment. Each of us handcuffed and hustled along by the officers, we were shoved into the station house in a most undignified manner, to confront the sheriff and a great crowd of people. Nor shall I ever forget the sheriff’s face when he shouted in an angry voice:
“Women, by heck! When a woman goes wrong she sure goes!”
The place seemed to be crowded with people. The fish-pier man was there, and a farmer who said we had smashed his feed cutter. And Doctor Parkinson, limping about in his bedroom slippers and demanding to know where we had left his car, and another individual who claimed it was his horse we had taken, and that we’d put a tin can on his off forefoot and ought to be sued for cruelty to animals. And even Mr. Stubbs, because his license plates were on our car—and of course the old fool had told all about it—and the Cummings butler, who pointed at Tish and said that after the alarm was raised she had tried to get back into the house again, which was, of course, ridiculous.
I must say it looked bad for us, especially when the crowd moved and we saw a man lying in a corner with an overcoat under his head and his eyes shut. Tish, who had not lost an ounce of dignity, gazed at him without expression.
“I dare say,” she said, “that you claim that that is our work also.”
“Just about killed him, you have,” said the sheriff. “Went right through him with that motorcycle you stole. Murder—that’s what it’s likely to be—murder. D’you get his name, doctor?”
“Only roused enough to say it was Bill,” said Doctor Parkinson. “I wish myself to lodge a complaint for assault and battery against these women. I am per——”