His Lordship's Leopard: A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts. Wells David Dwight
she said; "but when I heard Alvy's voice on the box I knew it must be all right."
"Of course," continued Cecil, "we hadn't the least idea there was anybody else in the van."
"Oh, I didn't mind so much," she said. "He was quite nice and respectful, and very soft to fall on. I guess he must be all black and blue from the number of times I hit him."
"Well, you're safe, and that's the main thing," said Spotts.
"But what does it all mean?" she demanded.
"Oh, there's time enough for explanations later on," returned the actor. "We're not out of the woods yet."
"Of course we aren't, stupid! Any one can see that."
"Metaphorically, he means," said Cecil. "But, joking apart, this Black Maria is, so to speak particeps criminis, and the sooner we lose it the better."
"Which way shall we go?" she asked.
"Oh, that's been all arranged beforehand with the other members of the party," said Spotts, purposely omitting to mention their destination in the presence of their undesirable companion. "It can't be more than a mile or two across country to the Hudson River Railroad, and we'd better make for the nearest station. Do you feel up to walking?"
"Do I feel up to walking!" she exclaimed. "Well, if you'd been chucked round for an hour without being consulted, I guess you'd feel like doing a little locomotion on your own account." And without another word the three turned to get their belongings.
"Say," interjected the tramp, "where do I come in?"
"Oh, but you don't," said Spotts. "We're going to leave you this beautiful carriage and pair with our blessing. Better take a drive in the country and enjoy the fresh air."
"Yah!" snarled the disreputable one in reply. "That don't go! It's too thin! Why, look here, boss," he continued, addressing Banborough, "you went and 'scaped with me without so much as sayin' by your leave, and now, when you've gone and laid me open to extra time for evadin' of my penalty, you've got the cheek to propose to leave me alone in a cold world with that!" And he pointed expressively at the Black Maria.
"It is rather hard lines," admitted Cecil. "But, you see, it would never do to have you with us, my man. Why, your clothes would give us away directly."
"And I'll give yer away directly to the cops if you don't take me along."
Banborough and Spotts looked at each other in redoubled perplexity.
"You see," continued the anarchist, "I don't go for to blow on no blokes as has stood by me as youse has, but it's sink or swim together. Besides, you'd get lost in this country in no time, while I knows it well. Why, I burgled here as a boy."
"What's to be done?" asked Cecil.
"Oh, I suppose we've got to take him along," replied the actor. "We're all in the same boat, if it comes to that."
"Now if youse gents," suggested the tramp, "could find an extra pair of pants between you, this coat and hat would suit me down to the ground." And he laid a dirty paw on Banborough's discarded garments.
"No you don't!" cried that gentleman, hastily recovering his possessions. "Haven't you got any clothes in that bag of yours, Spotts?"
"Well, I have got a costume, Bishop, and that's a fact," replied the actor; "but it's hardly in his line, I should think."
"What is it?" asked the Englishman. "You seem about of a size."
"It's a Quaker outfit. I used it in a curtain-raiser we were playing."
"That would do very well," said Cecil, "if it isn't too pronounced."
"Oh, it's tame enough," replied the actor, who exercised a restraint in his art for which those who met him casually did not give him credit. Indeed, among the many admirable qualities which led people to predict a brilliant future for Spotts was the fact that he never overdid anything.
"Huh!" grunted the tramp, "I dunno but what I'd as lieve sport a shovel hat as the suit of bedticking they give yer up the river. I used to work round Philidelphy some, and I guess I could do the lingo."
"Give them to him," said Banborough. "I'll make it good to you."
"Well, take them, then," replied Spotts regretfully, handing their unwelcome companion the outfit which he produced from his bag, adding as he pointed to the woods: "Get in there and change quickly. We ought to be moving."
The tramp made one step towards the underbrush, and then, pausing doubtfully, said:
"You don't happen to have a razor and a bit of looking-glass about yer, do yer? I see there's a brook here, and there ain't nothin' Quakery about my beard."
The actor's face was a study.
"I'm afraid there's no escape from it, old man," remarked Cecil. "If you've your shaving materials with you, let him have them."
"There they are. You needn't trouble to return them."
Their recipient grinned appreciatively, and as the last rustle of his retirement into privacy died away, Miss Arminster turned to Banborough and demanded:
"Now tell me what I was arrested for, why you two ran away with me, and where I'm being taken."
"I can answer the first of those questions," broke in Spotts. "You're a Spanish sympathiser and a political spy."
"I'm nothing of the sort, as you know very well!" she replied, colouring violently. "I'm the leading lady of the A. B. C. Company."
"Of course we know it," returned the actor; "but the police have chosen to take a different view of the matter."
"Why is he chaffing me like this?" she said, appealing to Cecil.
"I'm afraid it's a grim reality," he replied. "You see, when the Spanish officials were turned out of Washington, they'd the impertinence to take the title of my book as their password."
"Well, then," she said, "they did what they'd no right to do."
"I suppose that would be a question of international copyright," he replied. "But 'The Purple Kangaroo' has proved itself a most troublesome animal, and as I thought you wouldn't care for quarters down the bay till the war was over, I took the liberty of running off with you."
"I'm very much obliged to you, I'm sure; but what next?"
"We're all to rendezvous at Yonkers."
"And then?"
"Well, unless the situation improves, I'm afraid it'll become a question of seeking a refuge in another country."
"If you think," she cried, "that I'm going to spend the rest of my existence in the forests of Yucatan or on the plains of Patagonia, you're mightily mistaken!"
"Oh," he said, laughing, "it isn't as bad as all that. Ours is only a political crime, and Canada will afford a safe harbour from the extradition laws."
"But the war won't be finished in a day," she contended, her eyes beginning to fill with tears.
"Won't you trust me?" asked Cecil, taking both her hands. "Won't you let me prove my repentance by guarding your welfare? Won't you – "
Indeed there is no knowing to what he might have committed himself in the face of such beauty and sorrow had not Spotts broken in with a cry of:
"It's all up now! We're done for, and no mistake!" And he pointed to the figure of a short, fat, red-faced man, very much out of breath, who was bustling down the road, waving his hands at them and shouting "Hi!"
"You'd better go and warn the tramp," said Banborough; and the actor plunged into the woods.
A moment later the stranger came up to them, and panted out:
"I arrest you both, in the name of the law!"
Neither said anything, but Banborough took one of Miss Arminster's tiny gloved hands in his own and gave it a little squeeze just by way of reassuring her.
"Well," said the new arrival, as soon as he had recovered his breath, "what have you got to say for yourselves?"
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