“Never mind, you don’t have to. Now, turn that thinker of yourn backward, and remember hard. Don’t it seem to you like the guy said somebody’d set a trap, no matter who, and that he and Mr. Trowbridge’d get the Stephanotis and the Carib—whatever it was,—outen the trap?”
“Yes, it does seem like he said that, only that ain’t sense.”
“Never you mind the sense. I’m lookin’ after that end. An’ then, wasn’t Mr. Trowbridge tickled to death to go an’ get these queer things from the trap?”
“Yes, said he had a nengagement, but he’d break it to get the Stephanotis—”
“Sure he would! In a minute! All right, Wilky. You keep all this under your Yellowtop; don’t squeak it to a soul. Goo’ by.”
“Sumpum told me not to go off to Philadelphia so swift,” the boy mused, as he went home. “Now, here I am chock-a-block with new dope on this murder case, an’ I dunno what to do with it. If I tell the police first, maybe Miss Avice won’t like it. And if I tell Judge Hoyt first, maybe the police’ll get mad. There’s that Duane guy, but he don’t know enough to go in when it rains. I wisht I was a real detective. Here I am just a kid, an’ yet I got a lot o’ inside info that orta be put to use. Lemmesee, who do I want to favor most? Miss Avice, o’course. But sure’s I go to her, that Pinckney feller’ll butt in, an’ he does get my goat! I b’lieve I’ll do the right thing, an’ take it straight to the strong arm o’ th’ law.”
Fibsy went to the Criminal Court Building, and by dint of wheedling, fighting, coaxing and, it must be admitted, lying, he at last obtained access to the district attorney’s office, for the boy declined to entrust his secrets to any intermediary.
Judge Hoyt was there and Detective Groot. Also Mr. Duane, looking a bit despairing, and several others, all discussing the Trowbridge case.
Fibsy was a little frightened, not at the size of his audience, but because he was not sure he wanted all those present to know of his news. And yet, after all, it might not prove of such great importance as he expected. He had misgivings on that score, as well as on many others.
But Mr. Whiting, though he greeted the boy with a nod, was in no hurry to listen to him, and Fibsy was given a chair and told to wait. Nothing loath, he sat down and pretended to be oblivious to all that was being said, though really he was taking in every thing he could hear.