Charlie said, “You’ve got it mighty nice in here.”
“This car has caused us a lot of worry and trouble,” Westy said. “But things will be all right when we get it down by the river.”
“You can move it across Willow Place all right now,” Charlie said. “All you need is power.”
“You leave that to us,” I told him. “The engineer on the milk train is a good friend of ours. But, anyway, we’re not thinking about the car now.”
He said, “You boys are aces up.”
“We’ve done the best we could so far,” I told him. “Gee whiz, we don’t want to get anybody in trouble.”
He just said, “You see how it is with me; I’m up against it. Your fathers trust you, but mine doesn’t trust me. I know I’ve done some blamed fool things, but I wouldn’t burn a building down—why, that’s arson. I could be sent up for ten years for that. But the people of this old burg are just waiting to get something on me. If my father knew I was here last night, that would be enough for him. See?”
Westy said, “Well, he knows we were here last night and that seems to be enough for him, too.”
“Yes, but how about to-morrow?” Charlie asked us. “All you kids have to do to clear yourselves is to spill all you know. The flashlight business is bad enough, then on top of that if you say you saw me here and that I was here when you left, that will look bad, won’t it? You remember when I damaged my flivver last year? The old man was sore because he thought I was just trying to stick the insurance company for fifty or so. That’s him all over—suspicious. He’s always looking for trouble. He isn’t like your fathers.”
Gee, I knew that well enough, but I didn’t say so. Because a fellow isn’t to blame on account of the kind of a father he has wished onto him.