currence as soon as you
found out about the boy!" laughed Johnson.

"The little rascal!" shouted Sandy. "The nerve of him! To come in here
and steal the badge of the detective sent out to catch his father! Say,"
he went on, "I hope we'll run across that boy and make friends with him.
I rather like his grit!"

"You won't be apt to find him as long as he thinks it necessary to keep
his father in hiding!" Johnson suggested.

"He's an awful little liar!" exclaimed Will.

"I guess you'd lie, too," laughed Tommy, "if you had the same motive for
lying that he had. He's standing by his father like a brick! And I
won't lay it up against him if he tells lies enough to fill a book! He
drew one friend in me when he stole that policeman's badge."

"These detectives," Will asked in a moment, "are here to take Wagner
back to the penitentiary if they can find him, I suppose?"

"That's the idea! Unless some one of the relatives has leaked, the
police do not understand that Wagner is a factor in the Fremont case.
They are here to take him back to the penitentiary if they can find him
and that's all they know about it."

"Well," Tommy exclaimed, "let them get him and take him back to the
penitentiary! As soon as he gets run in for the remainder of his
sentence he'll tell about being in the banker's private office that hot
July night, and that will secure the release of the boy who is charged
with the murder. It seems to me that the police are helping along this
case."

"Not so you could notice it!" replied Johnson. "The fact is," he went
on, "Wagner is entirely innocent of the crime for which he was
convicted. He has had what the officers call a vindictive grouch on ever
since the day he was sent to prison. In other words, he is at war with
every person in the world except his son, the boy who told you such
pretty fairy stories last night. If he is ever retaken and sent back to
the penitentiary, he will never open his lips, not even if the accused
son dies on the scaffold."

"And that's another beautiful little complication!" exclaimed Sandy.

"The friends of the accused man," continued Johnson, "must find Wagner
and contract to establish his innocence. If the police get him first, we
lose our case. I say this positively because there is no doubt that he
will kill an officer or two before he is taken. Now you boys see exactly
what you have undertaken to do."

"It's interesting, anyhow!" Tommy declared.

"Reads like a novel!