“We weren’t taken to Police Headquarters. They kept the bonds and turned us loose on a promise. McCord and Radford have a habit of doing business that way with us fellers.”
“On a promise?” I inquired.
“Yes, the cops said we could go if I’d produce the man who gave me the bonds to sell. Of course Brockway, curse the traitor, was in the game with them.”
“And you agreed to produce me?” I asked.
“Yes, of course. What else could I do.”
I myself did not know, but I asked Billy if he told the detectives that I gave him the bonds. The little fellow cast a look at me that was full of contempt, and at the same time I could see that he was hurt by the mere suggestion that he would play the part of a “squealer.” For fully two minutes neither of us spoke a word, but I was giving the subject a serious consideration.
“We’ll charge the bonds to profit and loss,” said I, in conclusion.
“No use doing that,” he declared; “you’ve got to see the cops and divide with them.”
I could calmly say I would charge the bonds to the loss column, but to divide money, that had been obtained through the looting of a bank vault, with officers of the law, sworn to protect the lives and property of the people, seemed to me to be too base a proposition for consideration. I had been driven to crime through injustice of the basest sort, had connived in the robbery of a bank through sheer desperation, the result of persecution, but I had not yet, it seemed to me, sunk so low as to divide ill-gotten money with an officer in the employment of the people,—the act, as it seemed to me, placing me with him in the same category of the traitor. Up to that time I had had no acquaintance with the New York detectives. I explained my thoughts to Billy. It caused him to smile.
“But why should I do this?” I asked; “they don’t know me from a Chinese idol.”