full of reproach that the two men could not refrain from smiling.

"Then you don't like Dardus?" smiled the one who had addressed him
first.

"I think he is unreasonable," returned Bob.

"Yes, and none too honest," commented the other.

With the various methods known only to the police detectives of the
large metropolitan police forces, the two men put Bob through a grilling
examination, trying in every possible way to scare him into admitting
either a knowledge of who the swindlers were, or of direct complicity in
the confidence game, but without being able to shake his story, even in
the slightest detail.

Loath as the police officials were to admit Bob's innocence, his
straightforward answers and manly manner finally convinced them that he
was, as he had said, entirely guiltless, and they withdrew.

As they returned to the outer room of the police station, the sergeant
looked at them questioningly.

"That boy had nothing to do with the swindle," announced one of the men
who had been examining Bob.

"That's what," confirmed the other. "If there ever was an honest boy in
New York, that poor little chap back in the cell is one. If you take my
advice, sergeant, you will let him go, and you will change the entry on
your police book from 'Arrested and Held for Complicity,' to 'Held for
Examination'."

"What's the matter with all you guys, anyway?" snarled the sergeant, as
he saw that the weight of opinion was against him. "Has the boy
hypnotized you? It's enough to convict him that he should be working for
Len Dardus."

"That isn't his fault," returned the officer who had advised the
sergeant to change the entry in his book. "His mother and father died
when he was three years old, and his father provided in his will that
Dardus should be his guardian, though from what the boy has told us, he
hasn't had any too happy a time of it, poor little shaver."

"Now don't go turning on the sympathy," growled the sergeant. "I don't
care whether the boy is guilty or not. All I know is that we have got to
make a case against him. It would never do to have it said that two
sharpers could rob a countryman in broad daylight in our precinct.
Haven't our reports to headquarters said, and haven't the papers said,
that our precinct has been free from all such crimes for more than six
months, and this is one of the rawest swindles that has been worked for
a long time. So you two get busy and fix up your case if you want to
stay i