"What do you mean?" screamed Hester Grimes. "Do you suppose I would tell old Gee Gee that it was my fault?"
"You deliberately prevaricated--to her and to us," said Laura calmly.
"Call me a story-teller, do you?" cried the butcher"s daughter. "How dare you! I"ll get even with you, Laura Belding!"
"It is the truth," Laura said, slowly and firmly.
"I"ll fix you for this, Laura Belding!" pursued Hester, trembling with rage. She turned to sweep them all with her angry glance. "I"ll fix you all! I won"t have anything to do with any of you out of school--so there!
And I won"t act in your hateful old play!"
She ran out of the room as she said this and left the girls--at least, most of them--in a state of blank despair. The bell rang for the next session before anybody could speak.
Laura seemed quite calm and unruffled. The others got through their recitations as best they could until lunch hour. Jess and Bobby caught up with Laura on the street when the latter went out for her customary walk.
"Oh, Laura! What shall we do?" almost wept Jess. "Only two days! n.o.body can learn that part--not even as good as Hester knew it--before Friday night."
At that moment Chet Belding appeared from around the corner. He was red and almost breathless--in a high state of excitement, and no mistake.
"What do you think, girls?" he cried, "We got a line on Purt Sweet"s automobile and why he has been hiding about where it was that Sat.u.r.day night the man from Alaska was hurt."
"What is it? Tell us?" asked Laura.
"I met Dan Smith. He goes to the East High, you know, and he lives across the street from the Grimes" place. You know?"
"Hester Grimes?" cried Jess.
"Yes. Your dear friend. Well, Dan was up all night that night with a raging toothache. He said the Grimes" had a party. Purt was there with his car.
Dan knows the car was taken away from the house and was gone more than an hour that evening, and that Purt did not go with the car.
"See? He"s shielding somebody--the poor fish!" added Chet. "That is what Short and Long has been saying. Now, what do you know about that?"
CHAPTER XXII
THE CASE FOR AND AGAINST PURT
The news Chet had divulged was so exciting that the girls quite forgot for the time being the wreck that Hester Grimes seemed to have made of the forthcoming performance of "The Rose Garden."
Their chattering tongues mentioned Hester more than once, however, as they discussed Chet"s news. Whether Purt Sweet"s car had run down the man from Alaska or not, what did Hester know about it?
"Can it be possible that Purt is shielding Hester in this matter?" Laura queried gravely.
"Oh, it couldn"t be! She wasn"t in that car that knocked down Mr. Nemo of Nowhere," Bobby declared emphatically;
"He has always favored Hester and Lil," Jess
"Pooh!" again put in the irrepressible. "That"s only because Pretty Sweet thinks there is nothing in this world so good or great as money; and both the Grimes and the Pendleton families have got oodles of it."
"I don"t know about that," Chet said quite as thoughtfully as his sister.
"It may not be their folks" money that attracts Purt to those two girls."
"What then?" demanded Bobby.
"They flatter him. He can lap that up like our cat laps cream."
"That is true," agreed Jess Morse.
"Certainly we don"t flatter, him," Bobby said bluntly.
"It may be that we have never given Purt a fair deal," Laura observed.
"Hester and Lil do not make fun of him."
"And is he paying Hester back by shouldering something for her?" Jess asked.
"Oh, she never was in that car when it was taken away from where Purt had it parked before the Grimes" house," Chet hastened to declare with a.s.surance. "I got all the facts from Dan Smith. He"d swear to them."
"Let us hear the particulars," begged Laura.
"Why, Dan says he was up at his window on the third floor of their house watching the lights in the Grimes" house. It was a big party. Dancing on the lower floor, and a crowd of folks. He saw two men--or maybe boys--run out of the side door and down to the gate, as though they were sneaking away from some of the others, you know."
"Well?" his sister responded. "Go on."
"Dan didn"t know the fellows. Fact was, he couldn"t see their faces very well, and so he could not be sure of their ident.i.ty in any case."
"The street is pretty wide there, it"s a fact," murmured Bobby.
"Those two fellows looked back as though they expected to be spied upon.
But they went to the car, found it was all right (Purt had the radiator blanketed) and got in. The starter worked, and she got into action as slick as a whistle, Dan said. He thought it was all right or he would have raised the window and halloaed at "em. There were no girls with them. The two fellows went off alone in the car."
"There were two men in the car that struck Mr. Nemo of Nowhere," murmured Bobby.
"Purt appeared, Dan says, after a little while and looked for the car. He got quite excited. Asked everybody that came along if they had seen it. He was in a stew for fair. And while he was running up and down, popping off like an engine exhaust, back came the car with only one of the fellows in it."
"Ha! The mystery deepens," said Jess, in mock tragic tones. "What became of the other villain?"
"You answer that question," grinned Chet. "You asked it!"
"But what happened then?" asked Laura interestedly.
"There was a row between Purt and the fellow who brought back the car. Purt pointed to the mudguard on the off side, as though it had been bent, or sc.r.a.ped in some way----"
"That"s what struck the man as he fell on Market Street," interrupted Bobby with confidence. "I saw it hit him."
"It was blood on the guard," said Laura.