“Who, me? Why, no, Mr. Cole. I just asked you if you needed any help in takin’ the boy out there. I could get a couple o’ policemen to go with you, you know, and then you’d be pretty safe. But o’ course if you c’n handle ’im, all well an’ good.”
“You’re a little impertinent, aren’t you?” asked Cole.
“Oh, no—not at all. But it’s my duty to try and keep the peace at all times. Just offerin’ my help.”
“Well, it’s not needed,” snapped John Cole, well knowing that he was being ridiculed, but helpless to make a complaint that Dickinson was doing more than offering his services in good faith.
“Well, so-long, kid,” said the detective, as John Cole started on again. “Be good out there, and they’ll parole you in about a year.”
“You mind your own business,” raged Cole.
But Dickinson kept on: “Just obey the rules, kid, no matter what happens. And always tell the truth. It’s the only way to make the best of a bad bargain. Don’t fight back. Stand for anythin’ they hand you, and you’ll win out in the end. So-long!”
And then John Cole and Joshua reached the entrance and passed out through the great glass doors.
CHAPTER VIII
NUMBER 5635
THEY rode in a street car to the furthermost outskirts of the city. At the end of the line they left the car and walked three blocks toward a high brick fence with iron spikes on top, above which loomed large brick buildings in the center of a vast inclosure. They were met at the entrance by a gate-keeper, who directed John Cole to the superintendent’s office. While his father attended to the business in hand Joshua, wide-eyed and wondering, remained in an anteroom. Now and then, in a large, painfully clean room off this anteroom, he saw boys of about his own age and older moving about quietly, dressed in gray suits with brass buttons and red stripes down the trousers legs, little black cloth skull caps, and heavy brogans.