Bob Chesters Grit | Page 6

his ward, he exclaimed:
"Then you refuse to do anything to assist Bob, do you?"
"Well, I don't know as I would put it exactly that way. I'll see if I can't
do something this evening."
"Well, you may be obliged to leave your store, whether you want to or
not," retorted Foster, and with this enigmatical remark, the very
suggestiveness of which caused an expression of fear to settle on the
face of the grocer, the reporter turned on his heel and left the shop.
CHAPTER III
FREE AGAIN
While Bob's champion, unknown to the boy, was interesting himself in
his cause, Bob was sitting on a little iron bunk his cell contained,
staring about him as though unable to comprehend the situation.
After a few minutes he heard footsteps approaching down the corridor,
and then he was suddenly aroused from his reverie 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