CHAPTER II
BOB FINDS AN UNEXPECTED CHAMPION
Among those who had heard the story of the swindling of the countryman were several reporters for the great metropolitan afternoon papers, and as the burly policeman dragged the pathetic figure of the grocer's boy to the cell, one of these, a particularly clean-cut, wide-awake young fellow, exclaimed:
"Sergeant, that's the rawest thing I ever saw you do. I don't believe that boy knows anything more about those 'con' men, and probably not as much, as you do. It's a shame to lock him up, and I am going to give you the hottest roast for doing so that the paper will stand for."
"You do, and you'll never set foot inside this station while I'm in charge," retorted the officer. "If you knew as much about old Dardus as I do, you wouldn't be so keen to champion this boy. The old man has been mixed up in many a questionable transaction, and I shouldn't be surprised if it turned out that he was in league with these fellows who got that country bumpkin's seven hundred and fifty dollars, and that he put the boy up to playing the part he did."
"I don't know anything about Dardus," announced the reporter who had taken up the cudgel in Bob's behalf, "and I don't care. If he is mixed up in questionable dealings, that doesn't mean that the boy is necessarily a party to them. You can't tell me that a chap, with a face as honest as that boy has, is a criminal."
"When you've been doing police stations longer, Foster, you will learn that you can't judge criminals by their faces," snarled the sergeant, and as the other reporters heard this caustic comment, they laughed uproariously.
"Laugh if you want to," returned Bob's champion, "but I am going to prove the boy's innocence of any complicity in the swindle."
And without more ado, the reporter left the police station.
Although the representatives of the other papers had sided in with the police official who announced his belief in Bob's guilt, they nevertheless experienced a feeling of uneasiness, lest Foster might after all be right, and they were holding consultation as to the advisability of investigating the story more thoroughly, when the sergeant exclaimed: