He held the phone and waited a minute. Then I heard the receiver make noise in his ear. He deliberated for a minute, and said, “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”

He said, “Write your name.”

I wrote Peter B. Smith.

He said, “Write an order to the post office asking them to deliver to me any mail that’s addressed to you and held at General Delivery.”

I wrote the order.

“Wait here,” the deputy said.

I waited in the office for an hour. When they came back, the man who had sold me the car was with them. “Hello, Smith,” he said.

“Hello.”

“You caused us a hell of a lot of trouble.”

“You caused yourself a hell of a lot of trouble,” I said. “My God, you might have known it was all a mistake. Why didn’t you get in touch with me? If I’d been a crook, you don’t think I’d have left two hundred dollars in the bank, do you? I’d have taken it all.”

“Well, what were we supposed to think under the circumstances?”

“How did I know what you were going to think?”

“Look here,” he said. “You want that car. It’s a good buy. We want the money for it.”

“You,” I told him, “are going to get slapped in the face with a suit for false arrest and defamation of character.”

“Nuts,” the deputy district attorney said. “You can’t pull that stuff, and you know it. Maybe you made a mistake, but it was your mistake, not theirs.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “Stick up for your taxpayers. I’ll import a lawyer. I’ll get someone to come in from Los Angeles.”

He laughed.

“Well, from Phoenix,” I said.

They exchanged glances.

“Look here,” the automobile man said. “This has been a mistake all around. It was your mistake. You drew your money out of the wrong bank, or gave us the check on the wrong bank. I don’t know which.”

“I got mixed up,” I admitted.

“All right. You’ve had an unfortunate experience, and so have we. The governor wouldn’t issue extradition papers until we guaranteed to pay all expenses. That cost us money. Tell you what we’ll do, Smith. You give us the check for sixteen hundred and seventy-two dollars on the Bank of Commerce, and we’ll shake hands and forget it. What do you say?”

I said, “I’ll give you the check on the Bank of Commerce because I always pay my bills. I’m sorry that mistake was made. But you had no right jumping at hasty conclusions and running to the police. That’s going to cost you money.”

The deputy district attorney said, “You can’t get anywhere with a lawsuit, Smith. As a matter of fact, you’re technically guilty. If the automobile people wanted to, they could go ahead and prosecute you.”