An eternity seemed to elapse. He saw Miss Connie fly to the telephone, then her weak little hands struggled with the ropes on her father's wrists. But before she could begin to loose them, four gigantic men in blue uniforms were climbing in the open surgery window to encounter a sight not soon to be forgotten. The doctor, bound and bruised, lay on the floor; beside him, a man rapidly regaining consciousness and sitting up in a dazed condition; a young girl, with brutal red marks about her throat; and on the floor at her feet a man with a boy clinging to his back like a barnacle to a boat, his young arms and bare legs binding the fellow like ropes. It took those police officers but the twinkling of an eye to have the two burglars handcuffed and cowed at the point of their revolvers, and to hear the whole story of the rescued doctor.
"But who's this little duffer?" asked the inspector, gazing at Buck.
"Why, look at his knees and feet! They're dripping blood!"
"Got that shinning up the creeper and the stone-wall into the bathroom," said Buck, feeling terribly awkward to be seen in such a plight before Miss Connie. So he stammered out his explanation, from the moment he had awakened to this very instant.
"Dropped the Damascus bowl on his head, did you?" gasped the doctor. Then, as he looked at Buck as if he saw him for the first time, he beheld his bleeding feet and torn knees. "Officers," said the great: surgeon, "you asked who he is. He's our boy! He's my boy! I never had a son of my own, but—but—Buckney goes to college next year, and he goes as my adopted son. This night has shown me what he's made of."
Then, for the first time in all that dreadful night, Miss Connie gave out. She sat weakly down, crying like a very little child. "Oh, Buckney!" she sobbed, "they told us not to take a Barnardo boy; that they were, half of them, just street arabs; that we—we couldn't trust them. So, sometimes I've been afraid to hope you were all right; and now you have probably saved my life."
"No 'probably' about it, Miss Connie," said the officer; "he undoubtedly has saved your life, and the doctor's too. But, come, child, don't cry; get to bed—there's a good little girl. You've had a bad night of it." Then, turning to his men, he commanded: "March those two choice specimens to the police station at once. Well, good-night, doctor! Good-night, Miss Connie." And looking at Buck he said, curiously, "Good-night, youngster! So you're a Barnardo boy, eh?"
"Yes, sir," said Buck, lifting his chin a little. "I used to be ashamed of it, but—"
"You needn't be," said the officer. "It's not what a boy was, but what he is, that counts nowadays. Goodnight! I wish we had more Britishers like you."
Then the door closed and the tramp of the policemen and their prisoners died slowly away in the night.
The Broken String