The other boys made no protest, although the fear and dread of having
gems which probably had been stolen—which, at least, did not belong to
them—discovered in the cabin was in their hearts, so Clay swung the door
open.
A slender, black-eyed boy of about sixteen stood there, an appealing
look on his face. When he dodged into the cabin they saw that his
clothing was shabby and insufficient for such a night, and that it was
soaked with rain. He shivered as he stood by the table and motioned to
Clay to lock the door. Before he could thank them for the hospitality so
grudgingly extended, the policeman’s strident voice came again from the
deck.
“Here!” he said, angrily. Don’t try to make a fool of me. You come on
out here! You don’t belong in there, you know. There’s been robbery on
the river to-day, and I want you.”
“If you’ll only tell him I belong here——”
The boy did not finish the sentence, for now the ring of the officer’s
club came on the door in good earnest, rattling the glass panel and
echoing through the little space within like the crack of doom, as Alex
afterward expressed it.
“Open up! Open up, or I’ll break the door in! I want the diamonds you
stole, and I want you!”
The boys looked at each other with apprehension showing in their manner,
and the stranger seemed to sense that something not on the surface was
going on in their minds.
“Well, officer, what do you want?”
Clay spoke the words with his head half out of the doorway, his eyes
momentarily blinded by the gleam of an electric flashlight in the red,
wet hands of a heavy man in the uniform of the Chicago police.
There was a short hesitation on the policeman’s part.
“Where’s the lad who just ran in here?” he then demanded, inserting his
club into the crack of the door and forcing it wide open, in spite of
the efforts of the boy to retain control of it. “You?”
“No,” answered Clay, “I’m not the lad who just ran in here. What do you
want?”
“You ought to know,” was the insolent rejoinder. “There’s been a diamond
robbery somewhere about this pier, and I’m looking for the stones and
the thief. Let me in for a look around, or it will be the station for
yours.”
Clay stepped aside, unwillingly, and the officer stooped down so as to
clear the low doorway and brushed into the cabin. His great bulk, his
fat red face, his arrogant manner, seemed to reduce the size of the
small room by at least half. His helmet was running water, and he
removed it and shook the drops over the table.
In a moment he flashed his light around, resting it longest, it seemed
to the boys, on the coffee-pot sitting on the electric stove. It seemed
to the imaginative Alex that he must see right through the tin to the
brown leather bag, and through the folds of the brown leather bag to the
stolen diamonds!
Next the policeman felt of Clay’s clothes and sniffed suspiciously when
he found them wet. He seemed disappointed when the garments of Case and
Alex proved dry to his touch. His face brightened again when he found
evidences of recent retreat from the storm in the clothes of the
stranger.
“So you are the one who just ducked in here?” he said. “You’re the lad I
saw skulking behind the corner of the warehouse beyond not long ago.
What?”
The stranger looked the policeman straight in the face with his black
eyes, but made no reply. The chums looked on, wondering how they were to
get rid of the incriminating coffee-pot.
They felt certain that the officer would make a search of the place and
discover the diamonds.
Then they would, in all probability, be hustled off to the police
station. They were still anxious about the strange absence of Jule, but,
after all, right glad that the boy was not there to share this
suspicion.
“Come,” grumbled the officer, shaking the stranger roughly by the
shoulder, “the game is up! Give up the diamonds and come along.”
“I haven’t got the diamonds,” faltered the lad. “I don’t know where they
are. I’m not a thief. I belong here with these boys.”
The officer turned to Clay, whom he now recognized as one he had often
seen about the boat, and of whom he knew nothing discreditable.
“Does he belong here?” he asked.
Clay hesitated. The stranger looked so cold and hungry, and his eyes
were appealing, and his manner asked for sympathy! He was sorely tempted
to make a statement in his behalf which was not true, and which he knew
would be regretted as long as he lived.
To deny the story told by the shivering lad would certainly cause his
arrest as a diamond thief. The policeman might go away with his prisoner
without searching the cabin if he was told that the lad had never set
foot there before. In that case the gems would not be discovered in the
possession of the occupants of the place.
It was certainly in the interest of the boys that the policeman should
leave without searching the cabin, and yet the stranger stood so in need
of protection that Clay could not for an instant decide what to do. Then
he caught the eyes of his chums, fixed anxiously upon himself, and moved
toward the stove where the diamonds reposed in the coffee-pot, surely an
odd receptacle for so valuable a parcel.
“I’m going to tell you the truth, officer,” he said, “though it may get
me into trouble. I——”
The stranger stepped forward, interrupting his progress to the place
where the stones were secreted.
“Wait,” the boy said, “I’m not going to get you all into trouble.
Officer,” he continued, turning to the wondering policeman, “I told you
a lie just now. I don’t belong here with these boys. I’ve never been in
this cabin before—before to-night. I’ve often watched the boat when it
was lighted up on cold nights, and when there was a smell of cooking
coming from the windows, as there was to-night, but I don’t belong here.
If you’ll take me away now, I’ll be glad, because I don’t want to get
these boys into any scrape.”
“So you have loitered about here nights, have you?” demanded Case, his
sympathy for the lad turning to suspicion. “What were you doing out
there by the warehouse a short time ago? Were you in here after our chum
went away. Are you the thief who stole our money?”
Clay tried to check the boy, but his words poured out in a torrent of
suspicion and reproach until the officer interrupted him.
“So ho!” he cried, “there’s been another robbery in your vicinity
to-night, has there? You’ve kept yourself busy, eh? How much did you
lose, lad?” he continued, turning to Clay.
“Case shouldn’t have mentioned it, because we really don’t know, yet,
whether it has been stolen or not,” Clay explained, “but the sum we miss
now is two hundred dollars.”
The policeman whistled softly.
“Do you happen to have it with you, lad?” he asked, facing the stranger
with accusing eyes.
“I never took it!” insisted the boy.
“Search him!” cried Case, who seemed determined to say and do exactly
the wrong thing that night.
“He doesn’t look like a thief,” Clay suggested, glad to be able to say
something in the dejected lad’s favor.
“Much you know what a thief looks like!” said the officer.
“I don’t believe he is a thief,” declared Alex. “I don’t believe he ever
stole the diamonds!”
“We’ll pass it on to the judge,” grinned the policeman. “Many’s the
innocent face with a black heart behind it. So I’ll be taking the boy to
the sergeant, and asking you boys to come to the trial.”
A fierce dash of rain came against the cabin windows and a burst of
thunder for an instant drowned all other sounds. When the quick shock of
it was over the policeman was outside, pushing against the wind and rain
with his prisoner.
“What kind of a dream is this?” asked Alex, whimsically.
“A dream of a thief!” responded Case.
“Oh, quit it!” interposed Alex. “I think sometimes you haven’t got
common sense. I don’t believe that boy ever stole our money.”
“What was he hanging about for, then? I shouldn’t wonder if he did
worse—if he attacked Jule and left him lying dead somewhere.”
“You always go to extreme, Case,” smiled Clay. “What I’m thinking about
now is that the policeman went away without searching the cabin and
finding the diamonds! He says they were stolen to-day. Well, if he had
found them here what would he have done?”
“Pinched us!” exclaimed Alex.
“You’ll wash the dishes in the morning for that, Alex,” grinned Case.
“That’s slang.”
“Not!” retorted the other. “That is what the policemen call it
themselves. They say ‘pinched,’ and that brings the word into legitimate
use. Guess I know slang when I hear it.”
“Is that the boy you saw fighting at the head of the pier?” asked Case,
in a moment, of Clay.
“Not a bit like him,” was the reply.
“Well, what was he watching the boat for?”
“He explained that. He was lonesome.”
“Then why couldn’t he have gone home?” grumbled Case. “I just think he
knows something about where Jule is, or why he went away. I wish we had
asked him.”
“I’m getting anxious about Jule,” Clay said. “There may be some
connection between his absence and the robbery.”
“I’ll just bet he took the money with him when he went away!” exclaimed
Alex. “If he had to go away somewhere, and there was no one to leave in
the boat, that’s just what he would have done.”
“When he comes,” Clay advised, echoing Alex’s request, “don’t say a word
to him about the money. If he has it, or if he put it away in another
place, he will say so soon enough. There’s someone else on the deck!” he
added, as a quick step was heard.
“This seems to be a sort of reception night,” Alex laughed. “Wonder who
the new person can be? Why, it’s Jule!”
This last sentence as the door opened and a boy much smaller than the
others bounded inside. He was covered from the crown of his red head to
the soles of his feet with oilskins, which, dripping, made small lakes
and rivers on the cabin floor.
Alex darted forward and began pummeling the boy on the shoulders with
his fists.
“Where have you been?” he cried. “You’ve given us a bad evening, old
man. Come. Tell us about it.”
Jule took off the oilskin coat, leggings, and hat quite deliberately and
turned his attention to the electric stove where the coffee-pot was
still sitting.
The boys stood watching him with eager eyes. Would he say anything about
the money? Had he taken it with him? Had he placed it in a more secure
hiding-place? The questions were in their faces, although not spoken,
and Jule saw that something unusual was going on.
“Where did you get the oilskins?” asked Alex, glad of any excuse to
break the pregnant silence.
Jule lifted his red eyebrows with a comical grimace and walked toward
the coffee-pot. He was small and thin, and his freckled face was
pathetically wasted as to flesh, but his blue eyes were bright and
merry. As he moved toward the electric stove—the one place the boys
wished him to keep away from just then—a racking cough convulsed the
emaciated frame for a moment.
“Wait!” Alex exclaimed, as Jule recovered from the spasm of coughing and
reached for the coffee-pot. “Wait! I’ll get you the coffee!”
“I’ve already connected with it,” answered the boy, taking the pot by
the handle and shaking it.
The three stood by, waiting. After all, they thought, it did not matter
so much if he did know about the diamonds. He would have to know
sometime. The only reason why they objected to the gems coming into the
case immediately was that the boy would become excited and forget to
tell whatever he knew about the money.
“I’m going to ask him, plump out!” whispered Case to Clay, as Jule
lifted the pot and balanced it in his hand, as if to see what the
chances were for a full cup.
Clay restrained the impulsive boy by a motion of his hand. Jule did not
seem pleased with the investigation of the coffee-pot. There was a
bumping sound inside instead of the swish of the stimulating liquid he
sought. He lifted the lid and looked in.
They saw him take out the brown leather bag and hold it up between his
eyes and the light. Then he shook it, bringing forth from the bag the
musical tinkle of the gems. After a second’s hesitation, he started to
open the bag, but Alex snatched it away from him.
“Not until you tell us where you have been,” grinned Alex, dangling the
bag before Jule’s eyes. “Not until you tell us where you got those
oilskins. Not until you tell us everything about what you’ve been doing
to-night! Then we’ll let you know what’s in this bag!”