Nothing But the Truth

“It will do for a beginning. Oh, dear! some one saw us!” He looked around with a start, his unresponsive arm slipping from about a pliant waist.

“I don’t see any one.”

“He’s dodged behind a tree. I think it was Dickie. And – yes, there are one or two other men. They – they seem to be dodging, too.” Bob saw them now. One, he was sure, was the commodore.

“Funny performance, isn’t it?” he said, with a sickly smile.

“Perhaps – ?” She looked at him with genuine awe in the temperamental eyes. He read her thought; she thought – believed they had “come for him.” She appeared positively startled, and – yes, sedulous! Maybe, she was discovering in herself a little bit of that “really, truly” feeling.

“Oh!” she said. “They mustn’t – ”

“Don’t you worry,” he reassured her. “I think I can safely promise you they won’t do what you expect them to.”

“You mean,” joyously, “you have a way to circumvent them?” She was sure now he had; the aristocratic burglars always have. He would probably have a long and varied career before him yet.

“I mean just what I say. But I think they want to talk with me? Indeed, I’m quite sure they do. They are coming up now. Perhaps you’d better leave me to deal with them.”

“You – you are sure they have no evidence to – ?”

“Land me in jail? Positively. I assure you, on my honor, you are the only living person who, by any stretch of the imagination, could offer damaging testimony against me, along that line.”

He spoke so confidently she felt it was the truth. “I believe you,” she said. She wanted to say more, befitting the thrill of the moment, but she had no time. Dickie and two others were approaching. It might be best if he met them alone. So she slipped away and walked toward the house. It would be quite exciting enough afterward, she told herself, to find out what happened. It wasn’t until she got almost to the house, that she remembered she ought to have asked Bob for a ring. Of course, he would have a goodly supply of them. Would it make her particeps criminis though, if she wore one of his rings? Then she concluded it wouldn’t, because she was innocent of intention. She didn’t know. She wondered, also, if she should announce her “engagement” right off, or wait a day or two. She decided to wait a day or two. But she told Miss Gwendoline Gerald what a lovely time she and Mr. Bennett had had together, fishing. And Miss Gerald smiled a cryptic smile.

Meanwhile Bob had met Dan and Dickie and Clarence.

CHAPTER XII – JUST ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER

It was far from a pleasant meeting. Dickie looked about as amiable as a wind or thunder demon, in front of a Japanese temple. That oscillatory performance beneath the “kissing-oak,” as the noble tree was called, had been almost too much for Dickie. He seemed to have trouble in articulating.

“You’re a nice one, aren’t you?” he managed at length to say, and his tones were like the splutter of a defective motor. “You ought to be given a leather medal.”

“Could I help it?” said Bob wearily. And then because he was too much of a gentleman to vouchsafe information incriminating a lady: “Usual place! Customary thing! Blame it on the oak! Ha! ha!” This wasn’t evading the truth; it was simply facetiousness. Might as well meet this trio of dodging brigands with a smiling face! Dickie’s vocal motor failed to explode, even spasmodically; that reply seemed to have extinguished him. But the commodore awoke to vivacity.

“Let us try to meet this situation calmly,” he said, red as a turkey-cock. “But let us walk as we talk,” taking Bob’s arm and leading that young man unresistingly down a path to the driveway to the village. “I shouldn’t by any chance want to encounter Mrs. Dan just yet,” he explained. “So if you don’t mind, we’ll get away from here, while I explain.”

Bob didn’t mind. He saw no guile in the commodore’s manner or words. Nor did he observe how Clarence looked at Dickie. The twilight shadows were beginning to fall.

“Briefly,” went on the commodore, as he steered them out of the woods, “our worst fears have been realized. Negotiations with Gee-gee are in progress. Divorce papers will probably follow.” Clarence on the other side of Dickie made a sound. “All this is your work.” The commodore seemed about to become savage, but he restrained himself. “No use speaking about that. Also, it is too late for us to call the wager off and pay up. Mischief’s done now.”

“Why not make a clean breast of everything?” suggested Bob. “Say it was a wager, and – ”

“A truth-telling stunt? That would help a lot.” Contemptuously.

Dickie muttered: “Bonehead!”

“I mean, you can say there wasn’t any harm,” said Bob desperately. “That it was all open and innocent!”

“Much good my saying that would do!” snorted Dan. “You don’t know Mrs. Dan.”

“Or Mrs. Clarence,” said Clarence weakly.

Bob hung his head.

“We’ve thought of one little expedient that may help,” observed Dan, still speaking with difficulty. “While such influences as we could summon are at work on the New York end, we’ve got to square matters here. We’ve got to account for your – your – ” here the commodore nearly choked – “extraordinary revelations.”

“But how,” said Bob patiently, “can you ‘account’ for them? I suppose you mean to make me out a liar?”

“Exactly,” from the commodore coolly.

“I don’t mind,” returned Bob wearily, “as long as it will help you out and I’m not one. Only I can’t say those things aren’t true.”

“You don’t have to,” said Dan succinctly. “There’s an easier way than that. No one would believe you, anyway, now.”

“That’s true.” Gloomily.

“All we need,” went on Dan, brightening a bit, “is your cooperation.”

“What can I do?”

“You don’t do anything. We do what is to be done. You just come along.”

“We take you into custody,” interposed Clarence.

“Lock you up!” exploded Dickie once more. “And a good job.”

“Lock me up?” Bob gazed at them, bewildered. Had the temperamental little thing “peached,” after all? Impossible! And yet if she hadn’t, how could Dan and Dickie and Clarence know he was a burglar – or rather, that a combination of unlucky circumstances made him seem one? Perhaps that kiss was a signal for them to step forward and take him. History was full of such kisses. And yet he would have sworn she was not that kind.

“You’re to come along without making a fuss,” said the commodore significantly.

“But I don’t want to come along. This is going too far,” remonstrated Bob. “I’ve a decided objection to being locked up as a burglar.”

“Burglar!” exclaimed Dan.

“Don’t know how you found out! Appearances may be against me, but,” stopping in the road, “if you want me to go along, you’ve got to make me.”

The trio looked at one another. “Maybe, he really is – ” suggested Dickie, touching his forehead.

“Too much truth!” said Clarence with a sneer. “Feel half that way, myself!”

“Would be all the better for us, if it were really so,” observed Dan. And to Bob: “You think that we think you’re a burglar?”

“Don’t you? Didn’t you say something about locking me up?”

“But not in a jail.”

Bob stared. “What then?”

“A sanatorium.”