Part 7

The general came back to the table. A little firmness, tempered with a lucid explanation in words of one syllable had always been his method in dealing with the weaker sex. "My dear Henrietta, we can explain why we are here."

"Why are we?" asked Henrietta meekly.

"Why are we?" demanded the general. "Because we took it for the house of a very old and dear friend."

"But as soon as we entered, father, we knew our mistake."

"Henrietta," said the general, "I can not argue with you."

"No, father," agreed Henrietta. "But when we found out our mistake, why didn't we leave?"

"I can not argue with you, Henrietta," repeated the general.

"Money," said Bartlett, "is all they want. They always fine all motorists for breaking speed laws. It becomes a sort of habit with them."

"This ain't breaking the speed laws," warned the Watermelon. "This is house-breaking."

"Sir," demanded the general, "do you accuse me, me, of house-breaking?"

"The whole damn family," said the Watermelon bruskly. He wanted to slip away quietly, whether the men at the gate were waiting for him alone or for all of them, having a tramp's dislike for anything that smacked of a possibility of falling into the hands of the law. "This is some different from speed-breaking," he added gloomily.

"This is preposterous!" cried the general. "That I, _I_, should be arrested! Why, I refuse to be. No one has a right to arrest me."

"If you break into another person's house, father--" began Henrietta.

"But, Henrietta, I am not a house-breaker. I deny the charge."

"We all are," said Henrietta. "That is all I can see to it."

"Money--" began Bartlett again, the refrain of his life. He felt he could not be arrested and haled before a magistrate, even such an humble one as a country justice of the peace. His whole scheme would be ruined. Batchelor would probably want to return to the city as soon as he could bail himself out, and not care to have anything more to do with motor trips run on similar lines.

"No," snapped the general, "we will have no graft."

"Graft," sputtered Bartlett. "Who suggested graft? A wise manipulation of the financial end of a difficulty will more often save you than not. There is no graft in paying for a night's lodging."

"Under the present circumstances, paying for a night's lodging is graft," declared the general.

"It's graft, then, or prison," snapped Bartlett.

"Prison," said the general heroically.

"Prison is foolish," said Billy, "when one has a motor-car and can get away."

"Besides," said Bartlett, "graft is not dishonest for the man who gives the bribe."

"It ain't," agreed the Watermelon, "if the man has money enough to give publicly to some college or institution."

Henrietta drew on her gloves. "I think you are all cynics," said she. "Graft is dishonest."

"Why?" asked Bartlett, turning to her. "Why, Henrietta?"

"Because," said Henrietta firmly.

"The only dishonor is playing on another man's weakness, using that for your own ends. If I know a man has a price, am I dishonest to take advantage of the knowledge? No, certainly not. The dishonor is in him who has a price, whose dirty little soul cares so much for money that he lets his manhood go at so much in dollars and cents, like merchandise."

"Ah," cried Henrietta with quick sympathy for the tempted. "Poverty is so terrible and money such a temptation. It doesn't seem to be fighting fair to take advantage of it."

"Father used to say that it would take the constitution of an ostrich, the empty head of a fool and the nerves of a prize-fighter to stand poverty," said the Watermelon, thinking of those days when there were eight children and no money.

"I think," said Billy, as one propounding a wholly original suggestion, "that we should go at once."

"If we have done wrong," said the general, "we should suffer for it. We should not attempt to evade the consequences of our acts."

There was a heavy step on the porch without. The general turned pale, Bartlett reached for his pocket-book and Billy leaned weakly against the knobby end of the haircloth sofa. Only Henrietta and the Watermelon were quite calm, the latter with the calmness of desperation, the former, of despair.

*CHAPTER XII*

*THE KEY TO THE SITUATION*

The Watermelon accepted the inexorable with the tramp's sang-froid; Henrietta with a sweet dignity, though slightly flushed. The door had been shut before the conference began and the person on the porch had not come in sight of the windows. With a slow wink at Henrietta, the Watermelon strode to the door. Instinctively the general started to lay his hand on the young man's arm as he passed, to detain him a moment, but instead picked up his hat from the table and hoped that no one had seen that involuntary little gesture. The Watermelon threw open the door with a bit of a flourish and Alphonse, stolid, unsmiling, entered.

There was an involuntary sigh of relief from all, even the general.

"Well," asked the Watermelon, "what are the sleuths doing?"

"Where are the cars, Alphonse?" asked the general sternly, in the reaction of the suspense of the moment before.

"I left them at the back door," answered Alphonse, as one who understood perfectly the whole aspect of the case and realized that sometimes a quiet exit is more to be desired than great acclaim. "I thought you would not want them seen from the front."

"I have no objection to my car being seen by everybody," returned the general with a wave of his hand, which appeared to include the universe.

The back door was locked and the key gone, and the Watermelon had hurried to the door into the sheds and was struggling with the rusty lock. "This is the way," said he, "through the woodshed. That door's locked and there ain't a key; family probably left that way. I noticed the woodshed route this morning."

"We can shut this door on the side porch and lock it just as we found it," said Henrietta.

She shut the door and Alphonse as quietly turned the key. She lowered the window the Watermelon had opened and, finding that he had broken the lock in doing it, she slipped a dollar from her purse and left it on the ledge. It seemed to Henrietta to leave more, to pay for their night's lodging, would simply be adding insult to injury. One can not take unpardonable liberties with another's possessions and then pay for it in the gold of the land.

"Come," said she.

The Watermelon had already opened the door and was working on the lock of the one in the woodshed. Henrietta paused in the house door, the basket on her arm, and glanced back at the others. "Come on," said she.

"I will explain," began the general, with a firmness that was fast weakening.

"Father," said Henrietta, "you can not explain. Graft is dishonest. The only thing we can do is to run."

Billy grabbed up her gloves and obeyed with alacrity. Bartlett and the general followed in dignified majesty. Alphonse came last and shut each door as they passed through. With no undue haste, and yet with no loitering to admire a perfect summer morning, they climbed into the cars; Alphonse alone in the general's, the other five in Bartlett's, with Bartlett at the wheel.

"Shall we rush them?" suggested the Watermelon with happy anticipation.

Alphonse, like the voice of reason, calm, unemotional, blase, spoke: "There is a cow lane back of the barn. It is wide enough for the cars. It leads into the road farther on. I left the bars down."

"You're a man, Alphonse," said the Watermelon.

They glided without further comment through the barnyard into the rocky, tree-shaded cow lane. The general glanced behind. No one was in sight. The lane was narrow and rough, last spring's mud having hardened into humps and ridges from the passing of many feet. The cars ran slowly of a necessity, and while the engines throbbed, the noise was not loud, and the slight hill on which the house stood deadened the sound and concealed the cars from any one in front.

Henrietta leaned toward the Watermelon, who sat on the small seat just in front of her and just behind the general. "On such an occasion as this," she asked, "what did 'father' used to say?"

"Nothing," said the Watermelon. "There were two times when he never said anything, one was when he was asleep and the other was when he was escaping from the police."

"Oh," cried Billy, "he was a minister, why should he have had to escape from the police?"

"He left the ministry," explained the Watermelon.

"What did he say when he left it?" teased Henrietta.

"Good-by," said the Watermelon.

Then the cars turned into the road and two men stepped from the bushes on either side. They were tall, raw-boned country men, in flapping straw hats and blue jeans. Each carried a shotgun in the crook of his arm with a tender pleasure in the feel of it, each chewed a big piece of tobacco and each was apparently more than enjoying the situation. The Watermelon, leaning forward, with wary eyes, was pleased to see a look of surprise flit across their square-jawed, sun-tanned faces as they saw the second car slowly following the first, and four men instead of one, as the telegram had said "one man in a big red touring car," the make and engine number given.

For a moment the general could think of nothing to say. If he had been permitted to sally forth from the front door, he could have explained clearly, emphatically, with all his old-time belief that being himself no one could possibly doubt him or his good intentions. But now, caught thus, acknowledging his guilt by his surreptitious leave-taking, he did not know what to say, where to begin. Bartlett reached for his pocket-book.

"What's the make of your car?" demanded the taller of the two of Bartlett, laying his hand on the fender.

Surprised, Bartlett told, thankful that he had not been asked for his name.

"Engine number?" demanded the man.

Bartlett gave it.

"License number?"

"Great Scott!" snapped Bartlett. "What do you want next? My age? My number is on the back of my car. I have so many cars I have forgotten it. Go and look, or ask my man. Alphonse, what's the number on the back?"

"97411," droned Alphonse coldly.

"Be both these cars yours?" asked the man, puzzled and a bit disappointed.

"That car," said the general pompously, "is mine. Allow me." He drew his card-case from his pocket, and to the tall man's consternation and Bartlett's horror, presented him with his card. The two withdrew and consulted a moment. Clearly the family party before them was not the young man wanted in Wilton for stealing a motor-car and a suit of clothes, but for all that, what were they doing in an empty house?

"We can arrest 'em and get a fine anyway," said the taller of the two, and the other agreed.

The Watermelon leaned forward with languid interest, his hat on the back of his head. "How d'ye do?" he drawled. "What are you doing with the popguns?"

"Hunting," grinned the spokesman pleasantly.

"Any luck?" asked the Watermelon.

"Bet cher life!" said the man. "Got what we were after."

"Bear?" asked the Watermelon innocently.

"Autos," said the man.

"Sir," began the general. He felt a pressure on his shoulder so firm, that, irritated, he turned to remonstrate with Henrietta. One could not explain the situation with any degree of pride in the first place, still less so, if some one behind were apparently endeavoring to suppress one.

The Watermelon frowned. "We weren't breaking any speed limit, unless the snail is the standard you regulate your speed laws by." The men no longer believed that they had caught the thief, but if they insisted on taking the party before a magistrate, each would have to give his name. With the general present, fictitious names would only be so much waste of breath, and the Watermelon had no desire to give his assumed name to any one in the employ of the law.

"Naw," sneered the man, spitting with gusto. "There're other things to break besides speed laws."

"Yes," agreed the Watermelon, "your empty head."

"Now, don't get sassy," warned the man, growing angry. "I'm an officer of the law and I'm not going to take any of your sass."

"An officer of the law can't arrest a law-abiding citizen," snapped the Watermelon with righteous indignation.

"Law-abiding?" jeered the man.

"What have we done?"

"Try to guess," suggested the man pleasantly and the other laughed.

"I can't guess," said the Watermelon. "Is it for riding through the cow lane? We didn't hurt the lane any. I rode through this same lane last summer and the Browns didn't kick up any row over it. In fact, they were with me, that is, Dick and Lizzie were."

The man stared and the Watermelon frowned coldly.

"Do you know the Browns?" demanded the fellow.

"Not very well," admitted the Watermelon. "I was through here last summer and stopped over night at their place. They were fine people, all right. They told me if I ever came this way again to drop in and I said I would. It was a sort of joke. They gave me a latch-key." He drew a key from his pocket and held it out as proof of his integrity.

"Huh," said the man dully, gazing from the key to the Watermelon.

The second man took it. "Which door does it fit?" he asked.

"The front door," said the Watermelon promptly. "Go try it if you want proof."

"Not so fast," said the second man, who had taken the affair into his own hands. "If you know the Browns, tell me something about them? No, you chuffer feller, hold on, back there. Don't try to slip by, for you can't. You automobilists think that the Lord created Heaven and earth for your benefit and then rested on the seventh day and has been resting ever since. That's better. Now, then--" turning again to the Watermelon--"how many in the family?"

"How many?" queried the Watermelon. "I don't know. I only saw Ma and Pa and the three kids, Dick and Lizzie and Sarah. Sarah was a young lady about twenty, if I remember rightly; Lizzie was eight and Dick was a bit older, ten or twelve--twelve, I think he said. I remember his birthday came in January, anyway."

"Well, goldarn it," laughed the first man, thoroughly convinced. "Well, say, ain't we the easy marks?"

"Don't blame yourselves," said the Watermelon gently. "Father used to say that anything colossal, even stupidity, was worthy of admiration."

"What did Dick look like?" demanded the second man, loath to give up.

The Watermelon straightened up. "See here, my man," said he sternly, "we are in a hurry. You have detained us long enough. I have told you as much as I am going to about the Browns. It's a year ago this summer that I was there and I haven't been dwelling on their beautiful countenances in rapt and joyful contemplation ever since. I have seen a few people during the interval. Dick was fairly good looking, but Lizzie was the cutest. I took them through the cow lane to show them how they could go for the cows in a motor-car, farming up-to-date, see. Now move aside and let us pass, please."

"No, you don't," returned the man sharply. "Let that chuffer feller in the back car come up to the house with me while I try this key. Tom, you keep the others here, till I come back."

The Watermelon leaned back wearily indifferent and drew out his cigarette papers. Alphonse climbed obediently from the car, with his usual imperturbability. Calmly and willingly he scaled the stone wall and set off across the field with his captor. Tom thoughtfully examined his gun, one eye on the motor-cars.

The general's desire to explain was superseded by a still greater desire to get away. The grim faces of the two men impressed him with the gravity of the event. If they were to escape, now was the time, when the forces of the enemy were divided, but there was his car.

He could not leave that behind and the man in the road was a fairly good reason for him to remain where he was and make no attempt to reach it. Batchelor had put up a clever bluff, but it had been called, and they had to sit there until the return of the other man, when they would be exposed, for of course the key wouldn't fit. That second man was a stubborn brute. The Lord had made mules. He didn't intend men to be.

The general turned irritably and glanced at the Watermelon, lolling gracefully in his seat and humming a ridiculous little song between airy puffs of his cigarette.

Henrietta repressed a wild wish to scream aloud. Never, never again would she go into another man's house unless expressly asked to do so by the owner. She glanced behind, up the hill, toward the house. Alphonse and his captor had just come into sight again and were returning through the field. Henrietta breathed heavily. This was awful. When the two reached the stone wall, she hoped she would faint. She knew she wouldn't, she never fainted. She turned around that she might not see them. Nothing could be done, apparently, but simply wait for the hand of the law to fall upon them. The Watermelon had made a good guess as to the children, it seemed; why hadn't he been content to let it go at that? Why had he hauled out that useless key? She had ceased to feel, to think. She looked at Billy. Billy was frozen dumb. This was the end. Bartlett glanced at the man in the road and tried to figure his price.

The Watermelon turned carelessly and spoke to Henrietta. "That was a pretty bird up there. Did you see it?"

"Yes," said Henrietta automatically, though she had seen no bird. She heard the two men now right behind the car and she sank back limply. All was over.

"Well?" queried the Watermelon.

"By gum," admitted the man with the key. "It fits."

*CHAPTER XIII*

*ONLY TO BE LOST*

Bartlett grinned and removed his hat to wipe his brow. The general strove not to show a guilty surprise, Billy giggled and Henrietta began to live again.

The Watermelon held out his hand. "My key, please. Kindly remove that piece of artillery from the road and we will go on."

The man, covered with perspiration and embarrassment, handed back the key. "When the Browns come back, shall we tell them you called?"

"Certainly," said the general pompously, and in the exuberance of the reaction, he drew a half dollar from his pocket and handed it to the fellow. "Kindly give that to Dick," said he with the benevolence of a grandfather.

Billy waved to the crestfallen two and Henrietta gave them a gracious, forgiving bow.

"Never again," said she, "shall I do wrong. The possibilities of discovery are too nerve-racking."

"Father used to say--" began the Watermelon.

"I'll bet your mother didn't talk much," laughed Bartlett.

But the general had passed through an unhappy half hour and had no heart for jesting.

"If you knew the Browns, Mr. Batchelor," said he, "it was your duty to have told us so."

"Yes," said Henrietta. "I have aged ten years, and at my time of life that is tragedy."

"And why," asked Billy, "if you had the key, didn't we go in by the front door last night?"

The Watermelon stared from one accusing face to the other in frank surprise. Even Mike with his fat wits would have grasped the situation. "I didn't know them," he protested. "When I can go in by a door, I don't choose the window."

"But the key," objected Billy.

"Dick and Lizzie," added Henrietta.

"Their very ages," climaxed the general.

"It was only a bluff," said the Watermelon wearily. "I remembered their names and ages from books I had seen around the room last night and on the dresser, sort of birthday presents and things, you know. I never saw one of them."

The general roared and loved the boy. Henrietta leaned forward and patted him on the shoulder. "Wonderful, wonderful Holmes!" said she.

"Did you take the key on purpose?" asked Billy, all athrill with admiration.

The Watermelon flushed. He had taken the key if by any chance he should ever be in that neighborhood again, and the family away, he could spend the night in a comfortable bed instead of under a hayrick. Besides keys always came in handy. He didn't look at Billy. Like a sudden flash of lightning on a dark night, he had seen the difference between them, between what he had become and what he had been. But it came and was gone and the old careless indifference rushed back. He laughed and changed his seat to the one between the two girls.

"When I locked the front door, I slipped the key out without thinking, I suppose," said he. "Besides, keys are handy. When you are stony broke, you can rattle them and make the other fellow think maybe they're the mon."

"Now for breakfast," cried the general gaily, never long forgetful of his meals.

"Tell me," begged Henrietta, "what would father say?"

"Grace," said the Watermelon.

The general, as he informed Henrietta at the first roadhouse they came to and at which they stopped for breakfast, was full of the old Nick. He felt that there might be no limit to his daring, he might go as far as to rob an apple orchard and make no attempt to repay the owner, that was, if the apples were ripe. Henrietta's own spirits were rising. One never realized what liberty was until one threw aside conventionality--not honor, but conventionality, the silly, foolish laws of senseless ages. Billy as usual laughed at every remark, while the general, the tramp and the financier grew fairly brilliant beneath the spur of two pretty women's laughing eyes.

The Watermelon, in his silk socks, his soft panama and fine linen, was too much in the habit of taking fate as he found it, without wonder or protest, to marvel now at his change of fortune or to be disturbed or embarrassed at the unexpected society in which he found himself. Between him and Bartlett was only the difference of a few millions, both lived by their wits, and if one preferred to walk while the other rode, it was merely a matter of choice--no sign of inferiority between man and man.

They stopped that evening at a small town in the north of Vermont, as far from a railway and telegraph office as Bartlett could bring them. He had watched Batchelor carefully for signs of restlessness, but the young man appeared entirely absorbed in the present, with no thought for anything but the moment and Billy and Henrietta.

After supper, they loitered a while on the porch. The night was dark and warm. Across the road and over the fields, the frogs in a distant pond were croaking, and the air was thick with fireflies.

"Isn't it dark and still," said Billy, her hands thrust into the pockets of her linen coat, her feet slightly parted, as a boy would stand, her small head thrown back.

The Watermelon watched her covertly from the cigarette he was rolling, the clear oval of her dainty profile, her slender throat and well-shaped head with its coronet of braids.

"Dark as misery," said Henrietta dreamily.

"In the day, one sees a world," quoted Bartlett, standing beside her where she leaned, a slender figure, against the post of the porch. "In the night one sees a universe," and he waved his lighted cigar vaguely toward the myriads of stars above them.

"What good does that do," asked the Watermelon, "seeing a universe? It's miles away and can't help you any."

"Ah, but it's beautiful," cried Henrietta, who had never had much experience with misery. "It teaches one to look up, the night-time does."

The Watermelon lighted his cigarette in the cup of his hands and tossed his match away. "If you are trying to walk in the dark," he objected, "trying to get out of your troubles, say, and not standing still in the same old place, you can't look up."

"You have no beauty in your soul," declared Henrietta. "I think the idea is beautiful, seeing a universe."

"When you are down and out, you don't take any pleasure in looking at a universe," said the Watermelon. "A dollar, or even a quarter, will look a darned sight more beautiful."

"I wouldn't like to be poor," said Billy. "It must be so terrible to have no motor-car, for one thing."