The Mystery Megapack

and I’m all right! Let me answer Mr. Thomas!”
    It was the big sheriff who pried her loose, lifted her into the tonneau, and almost before Weston had seated himself again, the car jumped forward.
    “Now, Mrs. Weston! I begin to have hopes that you have more of a headpiece than your husband. You say Schmidt is locked up? In your house?”
    She turned a troubled face to him. “Schmidt?” she repeated. “Is that his name? Well, it doesn’t matter. I just knew that he wasn’t a detective, and so I locked him up.”
    “Yes, but how? He’s gone by this time, that’s a safe bet. But we’re right on his trail now, and I swear we’ll have the twisters on him before another day.”
    Mrs. Weston smoothed her rumpled hair, “I don’t know just what it was that made me suspicious of him! I guess it was the cat, at first. Cats are psychic; everybody knows that! They sense things that we don’t. And Romeo never could endure him! Wouldn’t set foot—paw I mean—into the house while he was there, I had always to put its saucer of milk outside—”
    The sheriff interrupted. “Never mind the cat, Mrs. Weston. We’ll see that it gets a medal, later on. Please proceed!”
    “Well, he wasn’t one bit like what a real detective ought to be! Oh, I never met one, of course, but I’ve read heaps of detective and mystery stories in magazines! And this Sanford Teller, as he called himself, didn’t have one single trait like them! He didn’t wear a thick, glossy black mustache, or chew a big black cigar, nor stamp around in thick-soled, square-toed boots, nor anything. And no detective would talk so freely about his clues as this man did. Of course, I didn’t really suspect him at first; if I had, I should have told Frank. It was only that these things were sort of mulling in my mind. And this morning, with Frank going for such a long walk, I got to thinking of everything while I was washing the dishes; and suddenly, I saw that everything he had told us would fit the bandit just as well as it did him! Yes, even better. That gold chain; the bandit would have it, and he might show it and pretend that he found it in Mr. Hodge’s writing desk, just to throw us off the track. Besides, I had been in the Hodge house, and they haven’t got any old writing desk! And so it was with everything else that he called a clue; if he was the bandit, he’d have all these things on him; and as for the papers and things that seemed to prove he was a detective, why he might easily have forged them!”
    Annie paused to draw breath. The car swerved to the right, and onto the road which, a mile ahead, passed the old Jarvis place. Thomas glanced at Weston. “Looks to me,” he said, “as if the little woman was the thinking partner in your concern!”
    Weston had the grace to blush, but made no answer save to squeeze his wife’s hand.
    “Well, it was just when I was beginning to work myself up into a real panic, that I heard a little noise behind me; and turning, there stood Teller—or whatever his name is—in the doorway! I thought he was sound asleep in the parlor, but there he stood, in his shirt sleeves, and with the queerest, the most awful look in his eyes as he stared at me! Oh! If I could have moved, I’d have run out of the house; but it seemed as if my legs had petrified, I just stood there and stared back. And then—I don’t know how ever I managed it—I smiled at him, as naturally as I could, and said: ‘Oh, Mr. Teller! My hands are all soapsuds; and would you mind just going down cellar and bringing up that ham that hangs from an iron hook? I want to parboil it for dinner!’
    “Well, for a full minute—and it seemed years and years—he just stood there, staring at me; but little by little that strange light in his eyes died out, and he spoke as politely as could be. You know, Frank, he always was the politest thing? So unlike you, that it was suspicious in itself! And then he turned and went down the cellar stairs, and the minute I heard his feet on the cement floor, I rushed across the room and slammed the door and bolted it! And then I ran into his room, and took his pistol from his coat pocket, and ran and ran as fast as I could, down the road straight toward Jed Hooper’s!”
    She was wearing a short kitchen apron; and from its wide pocket she removed a squatty .45 gun and handed it to the sheriff.
    “Mrs. Weston,” he said solemnly, “my hat is off to you! If ever you need a job, you can be my deputy