Summary: Henry and Catherine are arrested.

10: The Squire

Catherine felt helpless as her aunt nearly dragged her into the farmhouse. She wasn't physically powerless, but her aunt was so overcome with worry that Catherine couldn't add to it by chasing after a leopard.

Well, Catherine couldn't let her aunt know that she was chasing after a leopard.

Mrs. Allen told Susan all about Baby, and how Mr. Thorpe and Mr. Noh were still out there tracking it. The maid was suitably alarmed and efficiently went through the routine of locking up the house for the night. Mrs. Allen spared one call to Mrs. Morland to say that Catherine would be spending the night after all -- no need to tell her sister that their son's leopard was the reason why Catherine wouldn't be going outside. Mrs. Allen then called Information and proceeded to argue with one person then another as she sought anyone who would be able to help with the leopard problem.

Catherine meanwhile put on a small show of opposition before declaring that she was going upstairs to bed. She walked more heavily on the treads than she had as a young child in full tantrum but it left no ambiguity as to where she was. And if she picked the spare room with the most conveniently escapable window, that was nobody's business but her own. She'd sneak out, help Henry find Baby -- bless him, bless that wonderful man -- and then sneak back into her room before her aunt even knew she was gone.

The first step of her plan was almost too easy to implement. She was on the ground almost before John Thorpe had disappeared around the corner of the carriage house to find Baby's tracks.

"Catherine!" Henry whispered at her. "What are you doing? Get back inside." He tried to shoo her back up the side of the house but she held her ground.

"I'm here to help you find Baby before Mr. Thorpe or anyone else does," she told him. "Who knows what will happen if a zoo gets its hands on James' leopard before we can demonstrate how well behaved he is? Please, Henry, you have to let me help you."

"Catherine, it's not safe," he warned. "And I have no idea how to find a leopard, much less catch one. It was dumb luck the last time and I don't think we'll be that lucky again." Now that Thorpe had gone, Henry was having second thoughts about the possibility of success, and the various degrees of failure.

"Oh, but I have an idea about that," Catherine smiled at him. "Baby loved drinking from the bathtub in my room, and he found the duck by that stream. And did you notice that his water bucket was knocked over in his stall? I think the poor dear is thirsty, or at least very fond of water. There's a large pond on the eastern edge of the farm with a stream feeding into it. I think we should look for Baby there. If we take the car, we can get there much faster than Mr. Thorpe on foot. And we can use the car to hold Baby until we can get help. All we need to do is sing Baby into it."

Henry had planned to dismiss the idea out of hand and to send her straight back to the safety of the farmhouse but he ended up grabbing her by the shoulders. "Catherine, you're brilliant!" he exclaimed.

The outburst was a surprise to both of them but it didn't quite end there. Henry held her, and kept holding her. He nearly hugged her; with enough time, he might have done more than that. Then he remembered that he was a rational man of science. And men like that didn't kiss random women merely because they were clever.

The worst part was that she looked at him, which made him think that she wouldn't mind at all if Henry temporarily lost his head for such a thing.

They stood there for a bit until they became aware that time was not on their side. They rushed to Mr. Sherman's car. With Catherine behind the wheel, they drove away.

.o8o.

Catherine wasn't expecting the flash of police lights in the rearview mirror but she didn't think it was flashing due to anything she had done. She diligently pulled to the side to let it pass but it stopped behind her.

"Do you think they heard about Baby?" Catherine wondered, remembering her aunt had been trying to call for help.

Before Henry could answer, the officer knocked loudly on the driver's side window. Catherine dutifully rolled down the window and greeted the man. "Can we help you, sir?"

There was a moment of perfectly synchronized recollection in which they both remembered meeting each other earlier that day. It has been while Henry was in the butcher's shop buying steak for Baby. Catherine had been sitting in Henry's car which was unfortunately parked in front of a fire hydrant. The policeman -- Officer Newsom -- had then watched her get into a different car and drive off with Henry.

"You!" the man said, which struck Henry as funny because he himself had said the same thing to Catherine only the night before.

"Oh," said Catherine, deflating, "hello again." However easily explained were the events of the afternoon in Catherine's opinion, she didn't think the policeman was in an understanding mood.

"Step out of the car, ma'am," ordered Officer Newsom. He noticed Henry sitting in the passenger seat. "You too," he said. "I'm going to need to have you both come down to the station."

Catherine meekly exited the car but Henry protested.

"Oh, but we can't do that now!" he exclaimed. "There's an African big game hunter on the trail of a leopard who belongs to her brother. He's an insufferable oaf -- the hunter, that is; not her brother or the leopard. We think we know where the leopard is going, so we took the car to get to the water first. Now it's terribly important that we find Baby before anyone else; even if Thorpe wasn't a creep, I wouldn't want him accidentally inciting a panic. And George! We mustn't forget about George,” said Henry, steaming like a kettle; “if we don't find that dog, I'll never get my clavicle back. And then what will my uncle say when Mr. Sherman won't give us any money?"

Henry stopped abruptly, realizing how deranged he sounded.

"Yes, of course, officer," he added, subdued as he climbed out of the stolen vehicle. "We'll just get in the back of the squad car and come along quietly."

.o8o.

Henry had spent all his words when the cop had stopped them so it was Catherine who repeatedly explained to Officer Newsom that this was all just a silly misunderstanding.

Yes, Mr. Sherman had reported his car stolen not 20 minutes after Catherine had driven off in it, but Sacha knew Catherine. He would never press charges if he knew that she was the one who had borrowed his car. Certainly not after she had explained the real reason why she'd needed to borrow it! And yes, Catherine had left a car illegally parked in front of a fire hydrant, but she had left the keys in the ignition so that Officer Newsom or someone else on the force could easily and safely move it to a better spot. Fullerton was a close-knit community and people rarely got upset if a friend or neighbor needed to borrow a car.

"And I suppose I should welcome you to our little community," she said after a rare breath. "You must be new to the area. I've lived here all my life and I don't think we've met before. My name is Catherine Morland," she introduced herself. "That's Catherine with a C," she clarified, then spelled it out slowly as if the officer could copy it down while driving. "Last name is Morland, without an E. So many people think it's spelled like More Land, but I think of it as M Or Land. When I was in grade school and we learned about Paul Revere and 'One if by land, two if by sea,' I realized it was Sea Or Land which made me think of M Or Land but I could never come up with what the M stands for."

"You make a habit of stealing other people's cars, Miss More Land? You have many run-ins with the cops?" the man grumbled from the front seat.

"Nonsense!" she exclaimed. "My father is the minister at the Fullerton Episcopal Church. My parents taught me very clearly that stealing is wrong. The only reason I drove off in Sacha's car is to avoid a public panic. Can you imagine the chaos if everyone knew there was a leopard on Main Street? No, perish the thought! My father has a sermon on just that topic: the imperfection of man's law and our duty as Christians. And my mother runs a charity drive for anyone going through a rough patch. My whole family is deeply involved in the community. That's how I know you're new here. Even if you aren't Episcopalian, I'm sure I would have heard about you before a month was out."

She was determined to convince the man that this was an innocent misunderstanding. To do this, she kept making her case, talking all the way through the drive, and the walk into the station, and into a back room.

"Ladies first," Officer Newsom finally spoke again as he gestured through a doorway.

Catherine complied, still trying to explain how local church services and festivals were coordinated to avoid inconveniencing or excluding the different denominations in the area. Henry tried to follow but the policeman directed him to the neighboring cell. When she was alone in the cell, the officer shut her door with a satisfying clang. Henry preemptively closed his own door with considerably less flare.

Catherine whirled around and started to protest through the bars but the policeman held up a hand to silence her. "Excuse me, Miss, while I talk with your accomplice first," he told her. Turning to Henry, he pulled out a small notebook and a pencil and began asking questions.

The interview was an embarrassment to Henry. He reluctantly gave his real name and place of employment. Newsom wrote it down but glared dubiously at him when Henry explained that he was a paleontologist and then spelled it out. "The word is trickier than you think," he said apologetically; Catherine made sympathetic noises of assent. The worst part was giving his uncle's home telephone number to the policeman who then went into another room to place the call.

Officer Newsom sat at his desk and dialed the number. It was costly to call New York all the way from Connecticut and he drummed his fingers in irritation. The phone rang on and on, and then… nothing. Mr. Tilney's uncle wasn't home.

Newsom returned the handset to its cradle and scribbled a note about the time of the call and the lack of response, then gathered his supplies and walked back to the detention cells.

"Anyone else I can call as a character witness?" Officer Newsom asked when he saw Henry

Henry thought of his options and discarded them all. He wouldn't ask anyone from the museum to come up to Connecticut tonight to vouch for him. His sister would do it in a heartbeat, but she was still in Wyoming and nowhere near a phone. Mrs. Allen, Susan, and Mr. Thorpe all believed his last name was Noh, which surely meant they should not speak to his character. And Mr. Sherman… well, Henry was an accomplice to stealing his car, wasn't he?

"Perhaps you can dial my uncle again in a little while," he offered instead.

Officer Newsom made a note, frowning. "And what were you doing in Connecticut, Mr. Tilney?" he asked as he wrote.

"I was, well, I think Miss Morland explained it best," answered Henry. "There was a leopard."

The man looked at Henry with his pencil poised over the page but pointedly he wrote nothing.

"Look, I didn't know to believe it at first either, but if you aren't even going to write it down, there's no point in asking about it," Henry huffed in frustration.

Equally annoyed, Newsom glared at Henry through the bars of his cell before turning away from him and starting to leave again.

"Wait!" cried Catherine. "You still need to talk to me," she reminded him.

"Catherine Morland, Fullerton Episcopal," Newsom recalled and left.

"What are you doing? Where are you going?" Catherine asked with agitation. He was supposed to let her out of the cell! "Henry, do something! Stop him!"

Henry glanced around his cell but saw no spare door opened for his convenient escape. He sat down wearily on his cot and tried calculating whether he was about to spend the night in jail.

He didn't like his odds.

.o8o.

Newsom reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a local phone book. He began flipping through it. He settled on a page and found a certain number: “Aha, Fullerton Episcopal Church!" and picked up the telephone.

The line rang twice before a woman's voice answered with a practiced greeting.

"Hello, ma’am, this is Officer Bill Newsom with the Fullerton Police Department, I'm looking for Mr. Morland," he said into the receiver.

"I'm afraid my husband is leading the men's group right now," came the calm response. "Perhaps I can help you instead."

"Perhaps you can, Mrs. Morland," he agreed. "I need to ask some questions about your daughter Catherine."

There was only a slight pause before the woman told him to go ahead.

"Does your daughter know a man named Alexander Sherman?" Newsom continued, pencil hovering over his notebook.

"Sacha?" Mrs. Morland corrected him. "Of course she does! We're good friends with Sacha and Lily Sherman."

Newsom's mouth frowned a little in response as he wrote down, family friend. "Mr. Sherman reported his car stolen from Main Street today while I was on patrol. Your daughter was there. Do you know where she is right now?"

Mrs. Morland made a faintly disapproving noise. "I'm afraid my daughter is not very observant," she told him. "She might have witnessed someone else drive off in his car but she probably didn't notice anything unusual. I don't think her testimony will help you track down the car thief. But I suppose it won't do you any harm to speak with her. She's currently at her aunt's house; Mrs. Elizabeth Allen." Mrs. Morland then gave him the address and telephone number.

Officer Newsom thanked her and rang off before immediately dialing the number for Allen Farm.

Another woman answered and offered a perfunctory greeting, fitting for the late hour.

He introduced himself and asked, "Was a young woman named Catherine Morland there earlier this evening?"

"Yes, Miss Catherine arrived earlier today. She was accompanied by a friend of hers, a young man from New York."

"What time did she leave?" Newsom asked, his fingers poised to jot down the answer.

"Miss Catherine is still here," the woman replied. "Mr. Noh from New York and Mr. Thorpe from Boston are both out looking for a… Well, the men have all left. It's just Mrs. Allen, Miss Catherine, another man, and me left in the house right now."

The officer wrote the names down then glared at them. "So Catherine Morland is there right now?"

"Of course she is!"

"And where is her friend Mr. Tilney?" he asked.

“Mr. Tilney just arrived. He's talking now with Mrs. Allen.”

Newsom wrote it down and sighed. “So if you heard about some woman driving around in a stolen car with a man named Tilney, you'd testify that she couldn't be Catherine Morland?”

The woman made a shocked noise on the line before stating emphatically that it was impossible for that woman to be Catherine Morland.

Newsom copied it all down and thanked the woman. After the call ended he sat in his chair for a bit longer, thinking of what might possibly explain what was going on.