Bob Chesters Grit | Page 6

by a voice exclaiming:
"Well, kid, you came near making a good-sized bit of money."
"I don't call a dollar a very large sum," retorted Bob.
"A dollar? What do you mean?" exclaimed one of the two men whom Bob beheld standing outside the cell door, staring at him through the bars. "You had seven hundred and fifty dollars of that countryman's money, didn't you?"
"I saw seven hundred and fifty dollars of his money put in the envelope, but all I was to get for holding the envelope until those bad men returned was to be one dollar--and they didn't even come back to pay me, and now I haven't delivered the groceries, and Mr. Dardus will be very angry."
"Oh, ho! So you are Len Dardus' kid, are you?" queried the other of Bob's inquisitors.
"I'm not his kid, but he is my guardian," corrected the lad in a voice so full of reproach that the two men could not refrain from smiling.
"Then you don't like Dardus?" smiled the one who had addressed him first.
"I think he is unreasonable," returned Bob.
"Yes, and none too honest," commented the other.
With the various methods known only to the police detectives of the large metropolitan police forces, the two men put Bob through a grilling examination, trying in every possible way to scare him into admitting either a knowledge of who the swindlers were, or of direct complicity in the confidence game, but without being able to shake his story, even in the slightest detail.
Loath as the police officials were to admit Bob's innocence, his straightforward answers and manly manner finally convinced them that he was, as he had said, entirely guiltless, and they withdrew.
As they returned to the outer room of the police station, the sergeant looked at them questioningly.
"That boy had nothing to do with the swindle," announced one of the men who had been examining Bob.
"That's what," confirmed the other. "If there ever was an honest boy in New York, that poor little chap back in the cell is one. If you take my advice, sergeant, you will let him go, and you will change the entry on your police book from 'Arrested and Held for Complicity,' to 'Held for Examination'."
"What's the matter with all you guys, anyway?" snarled the sergeant, as he saw that the weight of opinion was against him. "Has the boy hypnotized you? It's enough to convict him that he should be working for Len Dardus."
"That isn't his fault," returned the officer who had advised the sergeant to change the entry in his book. "His mother and father died when he was three years old, and his father provided in his will that Dardus should be his guardian, though from what the boy has told us, he hasn't had any too happy a time of it, poor little shaver."
"Now don't go turning on the sympathy," growled the sergeant. "I don't care whether the boy is guilty or not. All I know is that we have got to make a case against him. It would never do to have it said that two sharpers could rob a countryman in broad daylight in our precinct. Haven't our reports to headquarters said, and haven't the papers said, that our precinct has been free from all such crimes for more than six months, and this is one of the rawest swindles that has been worked for a long time. So you two get busy and fix up your case if you want to stay in this precinct. If you don't, I'll tell the captain and the inspector, and you will be sorry."
Without response, the two officers, who believed in Bob's innocence, turned on their heels, and started toward the door of the police station.
"Hey, you two! Go down to the court. I am going to send this boy right down, and mind you remember what I told you," shouted the sergeant. And, suiting his action to his words, he gave orders for Bob to be brought from his cell and taken to the police court.
Just as Bob appeared in the outer room of the station house, Foster entered.
As he saw the boy whose cause he had espoused, the reporter exclaimed:
"So you have decided to release him, have you, sergeant?"
"Release nothing," growled the official. "He's on his way to court," and then, as he had read from the expression on Foster's face that his mission to interview Len Dardus had not been altogether satisfactory, he continued: "You found I was pretty near right about old Dardus, didn't you?"
"He surely isn't a very agreeable person," answered the reporter, "and I quite agree with you that if there was money enough in the undertaking, he would never stop to question whether or not it was against the law. But I tell you one thing, sergeant, you are dead