“The coppers have ’em!”
“The devil you say!” I was vulgar without thinking. “You were pinched?”
“That’s just it,” admitted Matthews, and I pitied him, for there was that about the little fellow that made me feel, almost know, he was dealing squarely with me, gambler though he was. However, I did not let him in my secret on that score yet, and said, a trifle coldly: “I thought you were a shrewd man. Many of the boys have trusted bonds in your hands for the market.”
He actually was suffering after I made this slighting remark, and I was forced to relent.
“Don’t take me too seriously, old fellow,” said I, “and tell me all about it. If there’s a muddle, we must get out of it some way. It’s a mighty scarce hole that’ll let a man in that won’t let him out if he tries hard to get out.”
“There’s no use chopping matters, George,” he said; “I trusted a man too much, and I’m in deep, that’s all.”
Then Billy told me how he had taken a man with him to dispose of the bonds, a Bill Brockway, whom I didn’t know, and that they went to a broker’s office in Wall Street. Brockway, whom he thought to be “right,” proved to be all wrong by betraying him to a pair of Central Office detectives. Recollecting Tim Golden, of the Detective Bureau at 300 Mulberry Street, I expressed a curiosity to know the identity of the detectives in this case.
“Jack McCord and George Radford,” explained Billy. I had never heard of them, which was not at all strange because of my short life in New York.
“Brockway and I were arrested,” continued Billy, “and the detectives took the bonds.”
“But you got out of jail, I see,” was my comment.