“Hullo, Jerry,” said one. The other said nothing; he was presumably Dum-Dum.
“This is them,” said Jerry, with a jerk of the fan. “You two, this is Miss Nelson and Mr. Dalton. And we want to know right now where Sal Saunders is.”
“Did—didn’t she get back?” Crawf demanded, jaw hanging loosely. “You aren’t stringing us, Jerry? Trying to get a rise?”
“Nix!” Jerry snarled, her wide lips curling back from her teeth. “Where did you leave her?”
Crawf looked at Dum-Dum, whose speechless countenance gave forth no help. “Why—why—we—I——Haven’t you heard a word from her? Don’t you know where she is?”
“We do not,” said Jim. “And you two, since you are the last two known to be with her, are responsible.”
“Jesus!” said Dum-Dum, and collapsed upon the stairway.
“I’ll swear—I’ll swear—if she’s gotten into anything, it’s her own fault!” Crawf’s sagged jaw did not close with this chivalrous utterance.
“Buzz on with the tale, you little gnat!” Jerry cried, threatening him with her fan. He retreated, a few steps.
“I—I—well, we went down to the Toast and Jam.”
“And—and I suppose we did get pretty fuzzy. You know Sal—you know she never can hold it. We told her to cut down, but you know how much effect that has on her; pretty soon she was so blotto she was making eyes at a couple of old boys in the corner. Isn’t that so, Dum-Dum? Wasn’t she blotto?”
“The old boys got fresh and we were feeling good, so—well, I guess we got mixed up pretty well. Well, then we thought we’d come away, in fact the head waiter or some such stuff requested our departure, all of us, so we eased out. Got out to the car and the old boys’ was next. Of course Dum-Dum couldn’t start it.”
“Nope; ours. Sal got sore right off—said we were doing it on purpose. The old boys stayed in their car and watched the fun. Dum-Dum got under the car, but that didn’t do any good. Finally I got under too. Dunno how long we were fooling around there—my pocket lamp burnt out—but we heard Sal talking. Thought she was talking to us, so we didn’t listen. Then all of a sudden we heard some brakes grinding a tune, and Sal yelling she’d never get back to town with us so she was going with them. I rolled out from under and saw the tail-lights of the old boys’ car spinning away.” He stopped and looked at them appealingly. “What could we do? We couldn’t speed up and follow after. All we could do was sit around and cuss Sal—which we did, complete. Then we worked on the car some more till somehow Dum-Dum slipped a cog and fixed it.”