“Well, upon my word!” breathed the colonel. “Do you expect me to be a fake hero? I never took more than two lessons in my life. That reporter[44] interviewed my teacher, who was killed in the Japanese War, by the way; he went to the army after my second lesson. He didn’t know any English beyond ‘yes’ and ‘if you please’; and he used them both on the reporter, who let his own fancy go up like a balloon. Well, where is the book?” [44] He found it easily; and with a couple of volumes of another kidney, over which he grinned. “The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Leavenworth Case! I’ve read them, too,” he said; “they’re great! And do you still like detective stories? You would have made a grand sleuth yourself, Aunt Becky.” Again he had half a mind to speak of the occurrence at the station; again he checked the impulse. “I remember,” he added, “that you used to hold strenuous opinions.” “You mean my thinking that the reason crimes escape discovery is not that criminals are so bright, but that detectives in general are so particularly stupid? Oh, yes, I think that still. So does Sir Conan Doyle. And I have often wished I could measure my own wits, once, with a really fine criminal intellect. It would be worth the risk.” “God forbid!” said the colonel hastily. [45]There came a tap on the door. [45] “Millicent!” groaned Aunt Rebecca. “I know the creaking of her stays. No, don’t stay, Bertie; go and get Janet and a rescue bridge party as quick as you can!” “The original and only Aunt Rebecca,” thought the colonel at the door, smiling. But, somehow, the handsome old dame never had seemed so nearly human to him before. [46] CHAPTER III THE TRAIN ROBBERS When the colonel awoke next morning the train was running smoothly over the Iowa prairies, while low hills and brick factory chimneys announced Council Bluffs. The landscape was wide and monotonous; a sweep of illimitable cornfields in their winter disarray, or bleakly fresh from the plow, all painted with a palette holding only drabs and browns; here and
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