[Illustration]
ALLAN, angry and chagrined, did as he was told and led the line; and
very soon a crowd began to gather again. Even some of the boys who had
most wisely taken to their heels, seeing that the policeman had his
hands full, ventured again into close quarters, and made audible remarks
to Pete and his companion.
They scarcely had gone a block when at least a hundred ragged boys and
girls of the quarter were following behind or running ahead to shout the
news into the alleys. Recruits came running from Mulberry Square. A man
with a push cart drew near to the curb and kept abreast of the
procession. It seemed to Allan that at least a thousand women were
craning their necks out of windows or crowding eagerly in doorways. His
face reddened, and he did not know where to look. He certainly felt very
angry and resentful, and yet, when people peered at him, he wondered
whether they did not think he looked guilty of something.
“What did they do?”
“They were caught lifting.”
“Three of them.”
“They tapped a till.”
“They got the whole gang.”
“There was a fight.”
These and a hundred other comments and inquiries came to Allan as he
threaded the crowded sidewalk; the shuffle of the policeman, with Pete
and his companion behind, and a clatter and patter of a multitude of
feet everywhere.
Allan was wondering whether they were going to a patrol box or directly
to some station, and they were within a short distance of a cross
street, when there were signs of a new and separate commotion ahead.
Heads in the windows began to turn the other way, and the advance guard
of the procession in which Allan had been moving had darted further
ahead, and was mingling at the corner with another crowd that surged
toward the same cross street.
Then it became plain that there had been another arrest somewhere. Allan
could see the helmet of a policeman, the face of a man without his hat;
and as they swung around the corner, the two processions almost at the
same moment, Allan saw another face that looked familiar.
Yes, it was Dobbs,—Dobbs holding one arm of the man without a
hat,—Dobbs, rather flushed, Allan thought, as if he had been running, or
was excited. Dobbs looked across at the other crowd and saw Allan, for
he laughed and waved his hand, and his lips moved, but in the hubbub
Allan could not hear what he said.
The police station was in Elizabeth Street. It looked very gloomy,
somehow. Dobbs was laughing again and waving his free hand, just before
he turned into the doorway of the station. The crowd had grown to great
proportions by this time. Allan never had suspected that so many men and
women, who looked as if they might have something better to do, would
take so much interest in seeing four prisoners taken into a police
station. Several policemen on the sidewalk seemed to be amused; indeed,
the affair appeared to be something of a joke to many people, including
Pete.
[Illustration:
“Several policemen on the sidewalk seemed to be amused.”
]
Allan, followed by the policeman and the two other prisoners, found his
way through the police station door.
When they got in Dobbs was talking over the railing to the Sergeant at
the desk. When he turned and saw Allan, he called out a cheery “Hello!
Did you wonder where I went to? So you’ve been snapping an arrest, have
you?”
“No,” said Allan, solemnly. “I’ve been getting arrested.”
“You?” Dobbs laughed in a puzzled way, and looked at the policeman, who
was pushing Pete a little further away from the door. “Arrested! Wait a
minute,” and Dobbs turned again to the desk, while the Sergeant wrote
something in a book, and the man without a hat answered certain
questions in a low voice.
Although he was feeling decidedly uncomfortable, in spite of finding
Dobbs again, and although there was a great chorus of voices in the
street and a crowd of faces at the door, Allan found himself watching
the face of the man without a hat. It seemed to him that he never before
had seen a face so white. Once the man turned and looked at those who
were standing near him. He had extremely dark eyes, that
twitched—sad-looking eyes, Allan thought.
When the man was led away toward the back room Dobbs swung about
quickly, and said, “What’s this? Arrested? What for?”
“They stole my camera,” Allan replied, “and I was trying to get it
again.”
“How about this, Steve?” asked Dobbs of the policeman who had captured
Allan, and who was now leaning lazily against the railing.
“I dunno,” returned Steve. “They were in a mix-up when I got there. This
young rat here had the camera,” and he pointed to the smallest boy. “Do
you know him?” he added, pointing to Allan.
“Why, he’s my neighbor!” said Dobbs, who evidently was much amused.
“This is his camera. I’ve been taken with that myself. I just left him
half an hour ago, when I first spotted the ghost.”
“I thought it was his,” pursued the policeman, though Allan looked
savage, and didn’t believe him. “Thought I’d bring in the whole debating
club, and let them have out the scrap here. I suppose Pete was trying to
win that box.”
“Well, we’ll put the pair in for this,” said Dobbs, frowning at Pete and
the other boy. “Did they hurt you?” he asked Allan.
“No,” Allan answered, “but I think I hurt them a little.”
Pete’s upper lip was swollen until he presented a comical appearance.
Dobbs saw this, and a twinkle came into his eyes. “You young
highwayman!” he growled at Pete.
“I was only foolin’,” whined Pete.
“Well,” demanded the deep baritone voice of the Sergeant, behind the
desk.
“I wish you’d let them go,” protested Allan. Dobbs was picking up the
camera.
“What!” growled Dobbs, with something in his voice that made Allan
understand that he didn’t mean it; “let these bandits go?”
“We didn’t know whose it was,” whimpered the smallest boy.
“Of course,” snorted Dobbs again, “you were looking for the owner,
weren’t you, like a good little boy?” “No complaint?” asked the
Sergeant, in a dry tone.
“Now, Sergeant,” said Dobbs, holding up the camera and blinking into the
finder, “please look pleasant; it may hurt your face to do it, but look
sweet for just a moment.”
“What about this, Steve?” demanded the Sergeant, turning to the
policeman.
“He won’t make a complaint,” said Steve.
“Then get out of here!” ordered the Sergeant, in a terrifying voice to
Pete and his companion, and those two reprobates did get out with
wonderful agility.
After they had gone Allan was surprised to notice what a pleasant smile
the Sergeant had. Dobbs went on to tell Allan, and the Sergeant at the
same time, how he had caught a glimpse of the man with the white face,
whom he called the Ghost; how the man darted into the alley; how he had
pursued him through the two alleys into the side street, and into other
alleys; how he had lost him, summoned the assistance of a policeman, and
searched several houses for him; how they caught him at last stretched
on his face under the rafters.
“And I have been looking for him for three years!” chuckled Dobbs.
“What did he do?” asked Allan.
“Do? What didn’t he do? That fellow’s been bad ever since he began to
breathe. We want him in Hazenfield for a store robbery and nearly
killing a watchman. Did I worry you some by running away?” “I _was_
bothered a little,” admitted Allan.
“Well, I’ve got to leave the Ghost here until court hours to-morrow, and
I’ll be going back to Hazenfield soon. Suppose we take another turn
around before we go back.”
“I’ll have to change my plates, somehow,” said Allan.
“All right,” and the detective went back to find the doorman. Presently
he returned with a sprightly, gray-haired man at his elbow. “The doorman
says he has just the place for you here.”
The place suggested by the doorman proved to be quite what Allan needed,
as far as being dark, for when he had closed the door there was not a
speck of light anywhere. It was a large closet with an old trunk in one
corner, an old coat with brass buttons hanging over it. A musty smell
pervaded the place, a rat scampered somewhere in the darkness, and Allan
did not especially enjoy the interval during which he transferred his
used plates to the box, and the new plates to the holders.
Dobbs was outside guarding the door, though the doorman said that no one
ever would think of opening it.
“Ah, Captain!” cried Dobbs, as Allan emerged from the closet. “Loaded
for bear now, are you?”
The doorman took great interest in the camera, and so did the Sergeant.
Allan felt very grateful and generous, and suggested taking the Sergeant
at his desk, the doorman standing near with his keys in a military
attitude.
“I guess I should count six,” said Allan, “and you mustn’t move.”
“Hear that, Sergeant?” demanded Dobbs. “Look benevolent and don’t
breathe.”
At this the Sergeant’s lips twitched, but he held quite still until
Allan had completed the exposure. The thing was hardly done when a
policeman came in with another prisoner.
“Business is good to-day,” laughed Dobbs; “good-by, Sergeant; hold on
tight to my Ghost.”
Then Allan confessed to Dobbs that he had forgotten to change the focus
of his camera to short range, and that the picture certainly was
spoiled.
“Let it go,” Dobbs said reassuringly. “They’ll forget all about it,
anyway. What do you say to walking up to the Grand Central by way of
Broadway? We can take in Union and Madison Squares and so on.”
Allan thought this a good idea. The truth is, he was feeling resentful
toward the regions in which he had spent most of the time since reaching
the city in the morning. He was glad to get away toward Union Square and
up-town.
Dobbs made many suggestions as to pictures, but Allan did not find it to
be possible to act upon many of them. He made some pictures in the
squares,—a tramp asleep, the Plaza at Twenty-third Street,
carriage-crowded Fifth Avenue, the kaleidoscopic bustle at the Grand
Central.
When they were on the train again, Allan began to feel that it had been
a notable day. Taking the pictures had made the trip seem more
interesting than ever before, and the arrest—
He hated to think about the arrest. It had happened by no fault of his,
unless it might be the fault of leaving the camera where he did when he
helped carry the old woman into the house. But he felt soiled by it, and
grew red in the face again at the thought of the crowds that had looked
at him and perhaps measured him as a criminal.
[Illustration:
“A tramp asleep.”
]
When they parted Dobbs made Allan promise to let him have a proof of
Sporty’s picture as soon as he could. “I’d like to have a squint at
those others too,” he said.
Allan himself was eager to see the results of his day’s work with the
camera; and although his mother and Edith were much absorbed in his
account of the day’s incidents, he spent the half-hour before supper in
preparing the dark-room for the developing.
Edith followed him and had a score of inquiries as to the Bowery, and
the mysterious alley, and Broadway, and the battle with the boys.
“And just to think, Allan, those horrid police might have locked you in
a cell like a common criminal.”
“Anyway, I was glad to see Mr. Dobbs,” said Allan. “He used to be on the
force in New York, and he knows everybody.”
“And I hope, Allan, you’ll never want to go in those dreadful places any
more. I like pictures of pleasant places and nice-looking people.”
“It takes all sorts of people to make a world,” said Allan, rinsing a
tray under the tap.
“Yes,” admitted Edith, “but you don’t need to mix with all sorts.”
After supper Allan began his developing, and Dr. Hartel was with him for
fully an hour, long enough to see the picture of Sporty and the Bowery
shoe-black, and the group of boys around the “Lemonade Man.”
It was all very fascinating, this work in the red glow of the lamp,—the
moments of expectation until the first signs of the image appeared, the
slow growth of the picture under the ripple of the developer, the
glimpse of the clear negative after the fixing. The trickle of the water
from the washing-box was real music to Allan.
Of course there were disappointments in some of the plates, resulting
from mistakes in the focussing, from intrusive foreground figures, from
too rapid movements that made a blur. But there were compensations too,
for there were many unexpectedly interesting things in the pictures,
things not seen by Allan at the moment of pressing his trigger, funny
gestures of people, droll expressions of faces.
[Illustration:
“The ‘Lemonade Man.’”
]
It was nearly ten o’clock when Allan left his last plates washing and
went into the house to report on his successes and failures. He carried
with him a rack holding the first dozen of the plates, which he wanted
to study in the better light of the sitting-room lamp. This lamp had a
plain ground-glass shade, which made just the right relief for the image
of a negative.
Half an hour later, when Allan returned to the stable, he found the door
at the foot of the stairs slightly ajar. This reminded him of the night
his plates were stolen. It set him thinking very quickly.
He had closed the door when he left the stable. He remembered turning
about with the rack in one hand while he drew the knob with the other.
Yes, he was sure he had closed the door. He stepped within the doorway,
and almost as he did so he heard a step on the stair and a shuffle as if
some one were crowding against the wall in the shadow.
“Who’s there?” asked Allan.
There was no answer.
“You might as well speak,” continued Allan; “you can’t get away.”
No sound came in reply to this.
Allan opened the door as far as it would go, and as he did so a figure
arose in front of him and roughly tried to slip past him. Allan was too
quick for the figure. He caught it with both hands—for happily he had
not carried anything with him to the stable—and with all the force at
his command threw it back against the steps.
The figure grunted at this but gave no other sign that might help to its
identification.
“Who are you?” demanded Allan again, panting with his exertions to hold
the wriggling unknown, who presently worked his way off the steps and
with a quick leap to his feet had almost reached the door, when Allan
caught him again and the two dropped in a heap across the sill.
The light from the house now fell on the face of the unknown. It was
Cheney.
------------------------------------------------------------------------