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 garage.  And that did make it look bad!”

“What did mother do when they—?” Jack did not look up while he stammered the question that had been three months feeding his imagination with horrors.

“Why, she didn’t do anything.  She went right away, that very morning, to a sanitarium and would not see anybody but her own private nurse and her own private doctor.  They gave out bulletins about how she slept and what she had for breakfast, and all that.  But, believe me, brother, they didn’t get any dope from her!  She just simply would not be interviewed!”

Jack let out a long breath and sat up.  At the corners of his mouth there lurked the temptation to smile.  “That’s mother—­true to form,” he muttered admiringly.