“And my aunt can vouch for my being in the house,” continued Harry.
“You see, Tony, you must have made a mistake, don’t you?” pursued Dawson.
The charge that he had been wrong in the identification of the marauder angered the Italian and he did not hesitate to let the fact be known.
Dawson and Harry’s chums, however, refused to accept the janitor’s statement, and began to ply him with a series of cross questions which finally extracted the statement from him that there really was a possibility he had made an error because he was fully thirty feet away from the person he had seen in the building, and the only light he had was a lantern.
As these facts were brought out, the boys who formed the investigating committee exchanged significant glances.
But their surprise was to be still further increased.
With an unexpectedness that made them gasp, Dawson exclaimed:
“I want you to tell me, Tony, if it isn’t in connection with this identification business that Pud and Elmer came over here to pay you some money?”
Too amazed to speak, the janitor and the boys with whom he had been talking when the others entered the tobacco shop, glanced at one another.
And their action was accepted by the other boys as a tacit admission that the amazing charge made by Dawson was true.