Descended to the ground, James Williams faced his captors with a smile. He was thinking what a good story he would have to tell in Cloverdale about having been mistaken for a burglar. The Rubberneck coach lingered, out of respect for its patrons. What could be a more interesting sight than this?
"My name is James Williams, of Cloverdale, Missouri," he said kindly, so that they would not be too greatly mortified. "I have letters here that will show--"
"You'll come with us, please," announced the plainclothes man.
"'Pinky' McGuire's description fits you like flannel washed in hot suds. A detective saw you on the Rubberneck up at Central Park and 'phoned down to take you in. Do your explaining at the station-house."
James Williams's wife--his bride of two weeks--looked him in the face with a strange, soft radiance in her eyes and a flush on her cheeks, looked him in the face and said:
"Go with 'em quietly, 'Pinky,' and maybe it'll be in your favour."
And then as the Glaring-at-Gotham car rolled away she turned and threw a kiss--his wife threw a kiss--at some one high up on the seats of the Rubberneck.
"Your girl gives you good advice, McGuire," said Donovan. "Come on, now."
And then madness descended upon and occupied James Williams. He pushed his hat far upon the back of his head.
"My wife seems to think I am a burglar," he said, recklessly. "I never heard of her being crazy; therefore I must be. And if I'm crazy, they can't do anything to me for killing you two fools in my madness."
Whereupon he resisted arrest so cheerfully and industriously that cops had to be whistled for, and afterwards the reserves, to disperse a few thousand delighted spectators.
At the station-house the desk sergeant asked for his name.
"McDoodle, the Pink, or Pinky the Brute, I forget which," was James Williams's answer. "But you can bet I'm a burglar; don't leave that out. And you might add that it took five of 'em to pluck the Pink.
I'd especially like to have that in the records."
In an hour came Mrs. James Williams, with Uncle Thomas, of Madison Avenue, in a respect-compelling motor car and proofs of the hero's innocence--for all the world like the third act of a drama backed by an automobile mfg. co.
After the police had sternly reprimanded James Williams for imitating a copyrighted burglar and given him as honourable a discharge as the department was capable of, Mrs. Williams rearrested him and swept him into an angle of the station-house. James Williams regarded her with one eye. He always said that Donovan closed the other while somebody was holding his good right hand. Never before had he given her a word of reproach or of reproof.
"If you can explain," he began rather stiffly, "why you--"
"Dear," she interrupted, "listen. It was an hour's pain and trial to you. I did it for her--I mean the girl who spoke to me on the coach.
I was so happy, Jim--so happy with you that I didn't dare to refuse that happiness to another. Jim, they were married only this morning --those two; and I wanted him to get away. While they were struggling with you I saw him slip from behind his tree and hurry across the park. That's all of it, dear--I had to do it."
Thus does one sister of the plain gold band know another who stands in the enchanted light that shines but once and briefly for each one.
By rice and satin bows does mere man become aware of weddings. But bride knoweth bride at the glance of an eye. And between them swiftly passes comfort and meaning in a language that man and widows wot not of.
