“Qualley,” Mr. Graham remarked good-humoredly, “I’ll have to admit that you are about the smoothest villain I have ever seen, and I have to admire both your nerve and your ingenuity, but I am afraid you will have to tell these things to the judge.”
But Qualley had not yet come to the end of his wiles. “Wouldn’t it be better, Mr. Graham, to get hold of the men who were in active charge of this robbery, all of them, rather than to prosecute one man who was only remotely connected with the thing and let all the others go? I know where those fellows are and can tell you just how you may take them. Otherwise you cannot find them in a thousand years. Promise me my freedom and I will not only do this but will tell you all the details of their crime. A clean sweep.”
Mr. Graham gave him a look of unutterable contempt. “No, Qualley, I still have hopes of being able to find the others myself, but even if I could not I think I would rather prosecute one Judas like you than turn you loose for the sake of catching the others.”
“Suit yourself,” Qualley said with a shrug, “but let me know when you find the others. That’s all.”
“Oh!” Scott exclaimed with a grin, “I guess I forgot to say that we stumbled on to the cabin out in the swamp that Roberts had all stocked up with provisions ready for just such an emergency as this and I have no doubt that it is the one to which Mr. Qualley referred when he suggested that the rest of them should hide in the cabin in the swamp till they heard from him that it would be safe to leave there.”
“Perhaps it is,” Qualley remarked dryly. He had evidently exhausted his resources for he had nothing more to say.
After a few moments of silence Mr. Graham came to a decision. He glanced at his watch. It was a little after two. “We could call up the sheriff, I suppose, and might be able to wake him up in the course of time, but it would be a long time before he could get here. So I guess you boys had better go to sleep here and I’ll take this gentleman over to the sheriff.”
The boys protested that they were both willing and able to finish the job which they had started, but Mr. Graham would not hear of it.
“Nothing doing,” he said in response to their plea. “I’ll see that you get full credit for all that you have done, but I know from your account of your adventures since you left here that you have not had half a night’s sleep. To-morrow we shall have to go after the rest of this bunch and that may mean a pretty hard day’s work. No, I want you to stay here and rest up. I’ve already had about four hours’ sleep to-night.”
They recognized the wisdom of this advice, but it was hard to miss the satisfaction of seeing Qualley actually put under arrest.