When, therefore, I waved my hand to my FIANCEE, thus showing a forgiving disposition, I was met but with a cold bow. I was heart-broken, but it is but to true that in our state of society the female must not make advanses, but must remain still, although suffering. I therfore sat still and stared hautily at the water cap of my car, although seathing within, but without knowing the cause of our rupture.
The Stranger came. I shrink in retrospect from calling him the Theif, although correct in one sense. I saw Tom stareing at him banefully, but I took no notice, merely getting out and kicking the tires to see if air enough in them. I then got in and drove away.
The Stranger looked excited, and did not mention the weather as customery. But at last he said:
"Somehow I gather, Little Sister, that you know a lot of things you do not talk about."
"I do not care to be adressed as "Little Sister,"" I said in an icy tone. "As for talking, I do not interfere with what is not my concern."
"Good," he observed. "And I take it that, when you find an overcoat or any such garment, you do not exhibit it to the Familey, but put it away in some secluded nook. Eh, what?"
"No one has seen it. It is in the Car now, under that rug."
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 G.o.ds! 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.
I am one to think quickly, but with precicion. So I said:
"You can"t drive, can you?"
"I do drive, dear Little--I beg your pardon. And I think, with a lesson now, I could get along. Now see here, Twenty-five dollars while you are asleep and therfore not gilty if I take your car from wherever you keep it. I"ll leave it at the station and you"ll find it there in the morning."
Is it surprizing that I agreed and that I took the filthy lucre? No. For I knew then that he would never get to the station, and the reward of two hundred, plus the Twenty-five, was already mine mentaly.
He learned to drive the Arab in but a short time, and I took him to the shed and showed him where I hid the key. He said he had never heard before of a girl owning a Motor and her parents not knowing, and while we were talking there Tom Gray went by in the station hack and droped somthing in the road.
When I went out to look IT WAS THE KEY RING I HAD GIVEN HIM.
I knew then that all was over and that I was doomed to a single life, growing more and more meloncholy until Death releived my sufferings. For I am of a proud nature, to proud to go to him and explain. If he was one to judge me by apearances I was through. But I ached. Oh, how I ached!
The Theif did not go further that day, but returned to the station. And I? I was not idle, beleive me. During the remainder of the day, although a broken thing, I experamented to find exactly how much gas it took to take the car from the station to our house. As I could not go to the house I had to guess partly, but I have a good mind for estimations, and I found that two quarts would do it.
So he could come to the house or nearby, but he could not get away with his ill-gotten gains. I therfore returned to my home and ate a nursery supper, and Hannah came in and said:
"I"m about out of my mind, Miss Bab. There"s trouble coming to this Familey, and it keeps on going to dinners and disregarding all hints."
"What sort of trouble?". I asked, in a flutering voice. For if she knew and told I would not recieve the reward, or not solely.
"I think you know," she rejoined, in a suspicous tone. "And that you should a.s.sist in such a thing, Miss Bab, is a great Surprize to me. I have considered you flitey, but nothing more."
She then slapped a cup custard down in front of me and went away, leaving me very nervous. Did she know of the Theif, or was she merely refering to the car, which she might have guest from grease on my clothes, which would get there in spite of being carful, especialy when changing a tire?
Well, I have now come to the horrable events of that night, at writing which my pen almost refuses. To have dreamed and hoped for a certain thing, and then by my own actions to frustrate it was to be my fate.
"Oh G.o.d! that one might read the book of fate!" Shakspeare.
As I felt that, when everything was over, the people would come in from the Club and the other country places to see the captured Crimenal, I put on one of the frocks which mother had ordered and charged to me on that Allowence which was by that time NON EST. (Latin for dissapated. I use dissapated in the sense of spent, and not debauchery.) By that time it was nine o"clock, and Tom had not come, nor even telephoned. But I felt this way. If he was going to be jealous it was better to know it now, rather than when to late and perhaps a number of offspring.
I sat on the Terrace and waited, knowing full well that it was to soon, but nervous anyhow. I had before that locked all the library windows but the one with the X on the sketch, also putting a nail at the top so he could not open them and escape. And I had the key of the library door and my trusty weapon under a cushion, loaded--the weapon, of course, not the key.
I then sat down to my lonely Vigil.
At eleven P. M. I saw a surept.i.tious Figure coming across the lawn, and was for a moment alarmed, as he might be coming while the Familey and the jewels, and so on, were still at the Club.
But it was only Carter Brooks, who said he had invited himself to stay all night, and the Club was sickning, as all the old people were playing cards and the young ones were paired and he was an odd man.
He then sat down on the cushion with the revolver under it, and said:
"Gee whiz! Am I on the Cat? Because if so it is dead. It moves not."
"It might be a Revolver," I said, in a calm voice. "There was one lying around somwhere."
So he got up and observed: "I have conscientous scruples against sitting on a poor, unprotected gun, Bab." He then picked it up and it went off, but did no harm except to put a hole in his hat which was on the floor.
"Now see here, Bab," he observed, looking angry, because it was a new one--the hat. "I know you, and I strongly suspect you put that Gun there. And no blue eyes and white frock will make me think otherwise.
And if so, why?"
"I am alone a good deal, Carter," I said, in a wistfull manner, "as my natural protecters are usualy enjoying the flesh pots of Egypt. So it is natural that I should wish to be at least fortified against trouble."
HE THEN PUT THE REVOLVER IN HIS POCKET, and remarked that he was all the protecter I needed, and that the flesh pots only seemed desirable because I was not yet out. But that once out I would find them full of indigestion, headaches, and heartburn.
"This being grown-up is a sort of Promised Land," he said, "and it is always just over the edge of the World. You"ll never be as nice again, Bab, as you are just now. And because you are still a little girl, although "plited," I am going to kiss the tip of your ear, which even the lady who ansers letters in the newspapers could not object to, and send you up to bed."
So he bent over and kissed the tip of my ear, which I considered not a sentamental spot and therfore not to be fussy about. And I had to pretend to go up to my chamber.
I was in a state of great trepidation as I entered my Residense, because how was I to capture my prey unless armed to the teeth? Little did Carter Brooks think that he carried in his pocket, not a Revolver or at least not merely, but my entire future.
However, I am not one to give up, and beyond a few tears of weakness, I did not give way. In a half hour or so I heard Carter Brooks asking George for a whisky and soda and a suit of father"s pajamas, and I knew that, ere long, he would be
In pleasing Dreams and slumbers light.
--Scott.