I’ve gone on record as saying that this girl was beautiful, and, standing there in the dazzling white of the headlights, she was more than that. She was a thing to start crazy thoughts even in the head of an unimaginative middle-aged thief-catcher. She was—
Anyhow, I suppose that is why I scowled at her and said:
“Yes, poor Fag, and poor Hook, and poor Tai, and poor kind of a Los Angeles bank messenger, and poor Burke,” calling the roll, so far as I knew it, of men who had died loving her.
She didn’t flare up. Her big grey eyes lifted, and she looked at me with a gaze that I couldn’t fathom, and her lovely oval face under the mass of brown hair—which I knew was phony—was sad.
“I suppose you do think—” she began.
But I had had enough of this; I was uncomfortable along the spine.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ll leave Kilcourse and the roadster here for the present.”
She said nothing, but went with me to Axford’s big machine, and sat in silence while I laced my shoes. I found a robe on the back seat and gave it to her.
“Better wrap this around your shoulders. The windshield is gone. It’ll be cool.”
She followed my suggestion without a word, but when I had edged our vehicle around the rear of the roadster, and had straightened out in the road again, going east, she laid a hand on my arm.
“Aren’t we going back to the White Shack?”
“No. Redwood City—the county jail.”