“You don’t have to call an officer. I’ll go with you. I’ll tell you everything! Only, please leave me alone, Rover! I’m getting to be an old man now! I don’t want to go to prison again! I was dragged into this thing! Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had anything to do with it!”
“Then you’re willing to admit that you had your share in the hold-up in Wall Street, eh?” went on Sam, anxious to follow up the advantage he saw he was gaining.
“I wasn’t near Wall Street! I’m not that kind of a man—you know that,” whined the former teacher. Evidently what little courage he had possessed was fast deserting him.
“But you had something to do with the affair.”
“Well, it wasn’t much. I was on the outside. I was hard-up and they promised me a thousand dollars if I’d help them. But I haven’t had a dollar—not a cent!” groaned Josiah Crabtree.
“Well, come along,” and without further ado Sam bundled the old man into the car and gave directions to the chauffeur to drive home as fast as he could.
It may be taken for granted that Grace Rover, as well as her sister Nellie, and Dora, were astonished when they discovered who the visitor was. None of them had forgotten how Josiah Crabtree had tried to harm them in the past nor the fact that the old man had spent two terms in prison.
“Just wait outside the door, Johnson,” said Sam to the chauffeur. “And tell Rankin to go to the rear of the house. This man must not be allowed to escape under any circumstances. He’s one of the rascals wanted for that hold-up.”
Having given these orders, Sam went to the telephone and called up the private detective agency working on the case and asked that one or two of the detectives be sent up immediately.
“Now then, I want your story, Crabtree, and I want it straight,” said Sam, after these details had been taken care of. “No phony work, now!”