CALEB HOOK MAKES HIMSELF AT HOME.
The boys stared at the man who had leaped among them from off the
ladder with feelings of alarmed surprise.
Nor was the surprise of Frank Mansfield less than the others.
It was Detective Hook who stood before him--Detective Hook, whom he had
supposed to be already far upon his homeward way.
"So these are your friends?" he said, quietly, as the boys gathered
about him, with faces expressive of anything but welcome. "I rather
thought I should tumble on something like this. Introduce me, Frank. It
will take off the awkwardness a bit."
"Oh, we don't want to know you, boss," spoke up one of the boys, with a
threatening air. "We don't allow no visitors, we don't, and we're going
to show yer, too, blame quick."
"Yes," growled Garibaldi, the Italian boy, "disa whata coma from taka
in de stranger among us."
As for Jerry Buck, Barney the bootblack, and Frank himself, they stared
at one another, the two Bats surveying the boy whom they had befriended
with angry looks, Frank regarding them with a face upon which was seen
plainly imprinted every evidence of innocent surprise.
He did not dare to offend the detective, who could, as he was well
aware, throw him into the hands of the law at any moment. He felt
both sorry and ashamed to think that the kind-hearted boys who had
befriended him in his trouble should for a moment think that he had
betrayed their hiding-place to a member of the police.
"Is this feller a friend of yourn?" demanded Barney, in no pleasant
tone.
"It is Detective Hook, boys," replied Frank, with as much firmness as
he could muster. "I swear to you all that I never breathed a word."
"I knowed it," muttered Jerry beneath his breath.
But Caleb Hook, with a keen realization of the way matters stood, gave
no opportunity for further words.
He had suspected the existence of just such a place as this from the
first moment of Frank's mysterious disappearance on the previous night.
Now, it was a life rule of this remarkable man that no suspicion worthy
of entertaining at all should be abandoned until either its truth or
its falsity had been proved.
It was for that reason he had chosen for his meeting with this boy, in
whose strange case he was becoming hourly more interested, the time and
place he had.
"Hold on, boys," he said, a broad smile breaking over his face, "before
you fire me out of here, before that little Italian sticks a tooth-pick
into me or you condemn Frank Mansfield for a traitor, hear what the
detective has got to say."
"Well, say on, den, blame quick!" exclaimed Sandy the Bat, who had
first spoken, "for we fellers is a-goin' to pound the life outer yer in
jest about a minit and a half."
"Indeed! Well, I'm not afraid. In the first place I swear now, without
being asked, never to give this place away, provided I catch none of
you boys transgressing the law. Second, I tell you now, and tell you
the truth when I say it, that this young man, Frank Mansfield, never
by so much as a word told me anything about this place, any boy here
present, or gave me the slightest clew how to enter it as I did."
All the boys stared at the detective in surprise.
"I knowed it," growled Jerry Buck again. "How could Frank Mansfield
tell him about the up-stairs way, fellers, when he didn't know nothing
about it himself?"
"Well, what do you want with us, anyhow?" asked Barney, with a somewhat
mollified air. "We're only a lot of poor kids as hasn't got no better
place to tie up in winter-time nor this. We don't do no one any harm."
"I know that," answered Hook, pleasantly, "and that's why I propose to
let you alone. I found the entrance beneath the flat tombstone in the
church-yard entirely by itself. If you wished to conceal it you were
foolish to clear the snow away. But you need have no fears of me, not
one of you. All I want now is that you answer me a few questions, and
then I'll be off about my business and forget that I was ever here."
"Well, that depends upon de questions," replied Barney, taking upon
himself the duty of spokesman. "Maybe we'll answer and maybe we won't."
"They concern Frank Mansfield only and can't harm you."
"Fire away, den," said Barney, shortly.
Frank, meanwhile, maintained a discreet silence.
It was plainly evident that nothing he could say or do would help
matters at all.
"Who was the woman that passed through here just now by the way I came
in?"
The detective had seated himself carelessly upon the table, with one
foot resting upon the ground.
As he propounded the question he coolly lighted a cigar, and passed one
to each of the boys.
"I don't know wot yer mean," replied Barney, with some slight evidence
of embarrassment. "Dere's no woman comes in here, is dere, Jerry?"
"Not much!" said Jerry, shortly, as he produced matches and lit his
cigar.
"Well, I'll try again. Which of you boys found the box last night?"
He held up the tin box of papers handed him by Frank Mansfield a short
time before.
"I found it first. And I gave it to Barney to take care of," replied
Jerry. "I picked it up on Rector street, right in front of the bank,
after I see'd the burglars run."
"Oh, you saw the burglars, did you? By the way, you are the newspaper
boy that was with Frank at the Catherine Market this morning?"
"Yes."
"What's your name?"
"Jerry Buck."
"How did you come to see these fellows?"
"Why, I was coming down Rector street on my way here just as they were
comin' out of the bank."
"Did they see you?"
"Not much," replied the boy, laughing and showing his teeth. "I'm
too fly for that, mister. I hid in the shadow of the wall, and give
them the bat call. Gosh! you orter seen them run! There was three of
'em--one had a big bag, another a carpet sack. It was the big feller
wot dropped that box."
"What do you mean by the 'bat call?'"
"I didn't mean to say nothin' 'bout that," answered Jerry,
hesitatingly, seeing that the Bats were regarding him with no pleasant
eyes.
"Well, never mind," said the detective, indifferently. "I don't want to
pry into your secrets, boys. All I want is to bring these bank robbers
to justice, and remove suspicion from our young friend here. That's my
business here to-night, and I've nothing to do with any other matters
at all. I suppose you are all friends of his, or he wouldn't be among
you. By the way, that was a mighty sharp trick, getting him away from
the officer who had him in charge last night."
"Oh, we're fly every time, boss," replied Barney, with an air of
conscious pride. "You can just bet your life on that."
Caleb Hook laughed pleasantly, and took an extra puff at his cigar.
"Frank, here's one witness to prove that you didn't rob the bank," he
said, pointing carelessly to Jerry Buck.
"An' here's anoder," put in Barney. "I seen the fellers too."
"I'm sure both of them will testify to what they know, Mr. Hook," said
Frank, somewhat puzzled to discern the detective's aim.
"Of course we will," exclaimed Barney. "Me an' Jerry has undertook to
set you right, and we're de kind as goes de whole hog or none."
The reply came heartily, nor was the assent of Jerry Buck any less
strong.
It seemed strange that these wild street Arabs had taken up his cause
in the manner they had.
Strange to Caleb Hook as he sat scanning the faces of the "bats" about
him. Doubly strange to Frank himself the more he turned it over in his
mind.
But his situation was such that there was nothing for it but to drift
helplessly with the tide, with Detective Hook for his rudder, to steer
him to whatever haven of safety he might choose.
And the boy did well to place his reliance where he did.
Had he searched New York from end to end, he could not have found a
shrewder ally or a better man.
"Good!" exclaimed the detective. "The testimony of two is better than
that of one. Would either of you know the three men again?"
"Every one on 'em," said Jerry, decidedly.
"Good again. You saw the man over whom I tumbled in Catherine street
this morning, when I tried to catch hold of your coat. Was he one of
them?"
"Yes, he was, boss, an' a minute after another--the big feller wot
dropped the box--went up the street."
"He did?"
"Sure's yer born. I know'd him the minute I saw him."
"I saw him, too, Mr. Hook," said Frank, eagerly, "and with him----"
"One moment," said the detective, throwing a warning look toward Frank.
"I'm listening to Jerry now. You can tell your story by and by. Where
did the man go, Jerry? Do you know?"
"No," replied the newsboy, shaking his head. "I went down to the house
where the woman was murdered. You seen me there, you know."
This, of course, was true.
And yet the reader knows, as well as did Jerry Buck himself, that it
was far, very far, from being the whole truth.
Of his subsequent adventures in Cagney's sanctum, of the conversation
he had overheard while crouched behind the whisky barrels outside the
half door, he said nothing at all.
Nor did he mention the little fact--and this the reader does not
know--of his having followed the respectable Mr. Elijah Callister to
the very door of his Fifth avenue mansion before allowing him to pass
from before his eyes.
For reasons best known to himself Jerry Buck was silent in all these
points, neither Frank nor the detective, as a matter of course,
dreaming of the knowledge he thus held in reserve.
But whatever had been the motive of Caleb Hook in thus penetrating
the retreat of the Bats in the Wall--the entrance to which let us
say right here, his keen eyes had detected from the suspicious
circumstances of the snow being cleared away around the great flat
tombstone by the side of which he had come to a halt, when in company
with Frank he had followed the strange apparition through the Trinity
church-yard--whatever had been his motive, we repeat, it was evident
that he had satisfied it now, for he leaped from the table and moved
toward the foot of the ladder leading to the church-yard above.
"Well, good-bye, boys," he exclaimed, as carelessly as though his
unexpected visit had been an every-day affair. "I'll call upon you
fellows when I want your testimony. Never mind opening the door; I can
raise the stone myself. Frank Mansfield, I want you. Come along with
me."
He sprang up the ladder, Frank following him.
Completely carried away by the manner of the man, not one of the Bats
even thought of interfering.
The flat tombstone was raised and lowered as they passed out.
It was of sandstone, much decayed, and only a light affair, after all.
What Caleb Hook had to say to Frank as they once more vaulted the
fence, this time walking up Broadway together, we do not know, but
it is a fact that the boy, who, had he fallen into the hands of a
detective of the average density of skull, would at that moment, in all
probability have been an inmate of the Tombs, spent the short remainder
of the night upon a lounge in Detective Hook's own room, as comfortably
as you pleased.