In the Cause of Freedom

by Arthur W. Marchmont

I KNEW enough of the methods of the police not to lay too much emphasis at the outset upon the fact that they had blundered. The police are pretty much the same all the world over. Charge them with blundering, and they will exhaust every resource to disprove the charge; and in the meantime, you who have made it are getting badly squeezed.

Moreover, I was not certain that it was a blunder. I hoped they were after the villainous couple who lived in the house, and that in the haste and confusion of the moment we had been mistaken for them. But it was quite possible Volna and I had been tracked, and were really the prisoners they sought.

In any case it was highly dangerous for us to be in their hands, and we should need to keep cool heads to get out again, without the fact becoming known that we were fugitives.

As it was, only an accident prevented the incriminating papers from being immediately found. Just the luck that I had told Volna to try and burn them and had not taken them back from her. The search to which she was subjected was little more than formal; but my pockets were all overhauled, and my papers taken out and examined.

I was not so foolish as to resist; but I began to feel pretty indignant when papers, money, and all, were retained by the leader.

“How did you get this?” he asked, holding up the police revolver. He appeared to attach great importance to my possession of it. This interested me greatly. That I had taken it from the police agent on the Devil’s Staircase would certainly be known; and if he was in search of us, it was a sufficient proof that we were the persons wanted. I had to get at that indirectly.

“If you will permit me I will give you an exact report of what has happened here, and that will account for everything.”

“All I want is a plain answer to my question. No long round-about, lying story.”

There was no help for it. I must lie. So I did it boldly. “Most fortunately I got the revolver here,” I said.

“You’re a cool hand,” was the sneering reply. “But it won’t do you any good to lie to me.”