“That's correct!” said the chief. “I knowed he was familiar to me, and I never forgets a face. Frisk him, Bill, and lock him up!”
“But my name's Binks!” protested our hero. “I'm an innocent man!”
“That's what they all says,” replied the chief. “Go through him, Bill, and lock him up; I want to go to me grub.”
Binks was cast into a dungeon. Next door to him abode a lunatic, who reviled him all night. On the blotter the ingenuity of the chief detective inscribed: “Windy Joe, the Magsman, alias Binks. Housebreaking in daytime.”
There is scant need of spinning out the agony. Binks got free of the scrape some twelve hours later. But it was all very unfortunate. He came near dismissal at the store, and the neighbours don't understand it yet. They shake their heads and say:
“It's very strange if he's so innocent, why he was locked up. When the police take a man, he's generally done something.”
“I'm not sorry a bit!” said Mrs. B., when she was brought back from Hoboken on Saturday by a wire the police allowed Binks to send her. “And when I saw him with the officers, I was as good a mind to tell them to keep him as ever I had to eat. To think how he deceived me about that watch, allowing me to break my heart with thoughts of it being stolen! I guess the next time Binks sneaks off to pawn his dead father's watch, he'll let me know.”