me as if I'm going to swallow you whole!
Get somebody on the phone, and then beat it before I cut loose and be
the perfectly awful villain you think I am!"

Marion took a startled step away from him, turned and came
hesitatingly toward him. And as she advanced she smiled a little
ostentatiously whimsical smile and touched the butt of her
six-shooter.

"I'm heeled, so I should be agitated," she said flippantly. "I always
was crazy to get the inside dope on that affair. Tell me. Were you
boys honest-to-goodness bandits, or what?"

"What, mostly." Jack gave her a sullen, upward glance from under his
eyebrows. "Go ahead and play at cat-and-mouse, if you want to.
Nobody'll stop you, I guess. Have all the fun you want--you're getting
it cheap enough; cheaper by a darned sight than you'll get the inside
dope you're crazy for."

"_What_ do you _know_ about it!--me running on to Jack Corey, away up
here on the top of the world!" But it was hard to be flippant while
she looked down into that stricken young face of his, and saw the
white line around his lips that ought to be smiling at life; saw, too,
the trembling of his bruised hands, that he tried so hard to hold
steady. She came still closer; so close that she could have touched
his arm.

"It was the papers called you such awful things. I didn't," she said,
wistfully defensive. "I couldn't--not after seeing you on the beach
that day, playing around like a great big kid, and not making eyes at
the girls when they made eyes at you. You--you didn't act like a
villain, when I saw you. You acted like a big boy that likes to have
fun--oh, just oodles of fun, but hasn't got a mean hair in his head. I
know; I watched you and the fellows you were with. I was up on the
pier looking down at you whooping around in the surf. And next day,
when the girls at the Martha Washington read about it in the papers, I
just couldn't believe it was true, what they said about you boys being
organized into bandits and all that, and leading a double life and
everything.

"But it did look bad when you beat it--about two jumps ahead of the
police, at that. You see Fred was along with the man that was shot,
and being in the garage and around automobiles all the time, he
thought to read the number of your car, and remembered it; near enough
anyway, so that he knew for sure it was the Singleton Corey car by the
make and general appearance of it, and identified it positively when
he saw it in your gar