ll.

CHAPTER II

BOB FINDS AN UNEXPECTED CHAMPION

Among those who had heard the story of the swindling of the countryman
were several reporters for the great metropolitan afternoon papers, and
as the burly policeman dragged the pathetic figure of the grocer's boy
to the cell, one of these, a particularly clean-cut, wide-awake young
fellow, exclaimed:

"Sergeant, that's the rawest thing I ever saw you do. I don't believe
that boy knows anything more about those 'con' men, and probably not as
much, as you do. It's a shame to lock him up, and I am going to give you
the hottest roast for doing so that the paper will stand for."

"You do, and you'll never set foot inside this station while I'm in
charge," retorted the officer. "If you knew as much about old Dardus as
I do, you wouldn't be so keen to champion this boy. The old man has been
mixed up in many a questionable transaction, and I shouldn't be
surprised if it turned out that he was in league with these fellows who
got that country bumpkin's seven hundred and fifty dollars, and that he
put the boy up to playing the part he did."

"I don't know anything about Dardus," announced the reporter who had
taken up the cudgel in Bob's behalf, "and I don't care. If he is mixed
up in questionable dealings, that doesn't mean that the boy is
necessarily a party to them. You can't tell me that a chap, with a face
as honest as that boy has, is a criminal."

"When you've been doing police stations longer, Foster, you will learn
that you can't judge criminals by their faces," snarled the sergeant,
and as the other reporters heard this caustic comment, they laughed
uproariously.

"Laugh if you want to," returned Bob's champion, "but I am going to
prove the boy's innocence of any complicity in the swindle."

And without more ado, the reporter left the police station.

Although the representatives of the other papers had sided in with the
police official who announced his belief in Bob's guilt, they
nevertheless experienced a feeling of uneasiness, lest Foster might
after all be right, and they were holding consultation as to the
advisability of investigating the story more thoroughly, when the
sergeant exclaimed:

"Don't let that fellow worry you. I've known Len Dardus for years. He's
as crooked as they make them, and he never had an honest man work for
him that I know of."

As the acceptance of the police official's theory would save them the
necessity of inves