It was an entirely new experience. Hitherto I
had always told the plain truth, as the law required, and now I found
the inventive machinery singularly rusty. But the wheels were made to
turn in some fashion. By the time we were mounting the steps of the
antiquated City Hall at the crossing of Cherry Creek, I knew pretty
well what I was going to say, and how it must be said.

At first they gave me little chance to say anything. In the
inspector's office my captor and two others got busy over a book of
newspaper clippings, pictures and descriptions of "wanted" criminals.
With wits sharpened now to a razor-edge, I came quickly to the
conclusion that I had been mistaken for some one else. The conclusion
was confirmed when they took an ink-pad impression of the ball of my
right thumb and fell to comparing it with one of the record prints.

After a time the inspector put me on the rack, beginning by demanding
my name.

Meaning to lie only when there should be no alternative, I told him a
half-truth. Though every one at home called me "Herbert" and "Bert,"
and it was as "James Herbert Weyburn" that I had been arraigned and
convicted, that was not, strictly speaking, my right name. I had been
christened "James Bertrand," after my father. My mother had always
called me "Jimmie," but for others the "Bertrand" was soon shortened
into "Bert" and from that a few home-town formalists had soon evolved
the "Herbert," a change which my own boyish and unreasoning dislike for
"Bertrand" was ready enough to confirm. So, when the inspector asked
me my name I answered promptly, "James Bertrand."

"Write it," was the curt command, and a pad and a pencil were shoved at
me across the desk.

Since the name was two-thirds of my own, I was able to write it without
any of the hesitation which might otherwise have betrayed me if I had
chosen a combination that was unfamiliar.

"Where are you from?" was the next question.

Here, as I saw it, was one of the holes in which a lie might be
profitably planted--profitably and safely. So I said, glibly enough:
"Cincinnati."

"Street and number?"

I had given Cincinnati merely because I chanced to be somewhat familiar
with that city, and now I gave the location of a boarding-house near
the river front where I had once stayed over-night.

"Where were you born?"

"In the country, about forty miles from Cincinnati."

"Traveling for your health, I suppose? Where's your baggage?"

I