Setting his dress-suit case down in the doorway, where it would be out of sight, Jack advanced boldly to meet the constable. The officer rather started on beholding the boy appear from out of the shadow.
“Can you please tell me the way to the railroad station?” asked Jack. “I want to get a train.”
“Right down this street,” replied the officer, which fact Jack knew well. “Out rather late, aren’t you?” asked the officer suspiciously.
“Well, it is late,” admitted Jack, as if some one had disputed it. “But I couldn’t get here any sooner,” which was the truth. “I’m on my way to Rudford, to work,” he added. “I had to leave rather suddenly, and this is the first train I could get. There’s one about three, isn’t there?”
He was glad he knew something about the timetable, though it was not much.
“Three-eight,” replied the officer. “You haven’t seen anything of a lad with a dress-suit case, have you?”
“A lad with a dress-suit case?” repeated Jack, as though such a curiosity was not to be met with outside of a circus. Then the alarm for him had been sent here, after all, he thought. But his natural manner fooled the constable.
“Yes,” went on the officer. “We’ve got orders to arrest a lad with a dress-suit case. Telephone came from the police at Westville.”
“What’s he wanted for?”
As if Jack did not know!