Page:Keeban (IA keeban00balm).pdf/233

 Phrases and periods from that talk I'd prepared for her came into my mind and mixed into the parade of other ideas which followed the spider-and-fly act. They gave me a laugh, anyway.

I lay, looked and listened. After a few minutes, I sat up. Apparently I had the house to myself. Also I had my watch and other personal possessions, everything except those plates.

I took a chance on rising; and still nobody disturbed me. Possibly I might have poked all over that house but I felt no overmastering impulse. The door and that street, on the other side of the pane with these nice, prim, old-fashioned curtains, looked very good to me. I got out and shut the door behind me. Over by the bridge I found a patrolman and asked him to take me to the nearest police station.

That was the place where I sketched to interested ears the essentials of what I'd done since leaving Chicago. I gave them all,—how I'd suspected her before she took the train, how I helped her get away at Cleveland; how I'd carried on the plates and went to return them, trusting to the patent leather platitudes I'd prepared to turn her to the paths of rectitude.

I gave them, with that last particularly, the